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IN ALL sciences, mainly in that of medicine, there have always been different opinions on the same spindle of spéculation, fugue variations of interpretation on the theory of phenomenological observation, divination itself, the base of all truth in medicine as in physics, and not immune to questions of novel dispute in revelation; because of everyone having their own way of seeing, language, & prejudices, the same objects & their relationships make them differently perceived. When i in 1778 gave my observations in Latin on putrid fevers, the shovel, & c. I made every effort to be free from prejudice; I tried to prefer the facts as they were, fans add nothing which was not necessary to spin my view publicly, in the practice of secrecy which did not interfere with the collective good; I dismissed, as far as possible, any hackneyed theory, and did not allow myself any personality. Convinced to have advanced nothing but truth, and of that to which I am not convinced I am entirely pervaded sufficiently, I thought I had fulfilled my task too soon, and was little anxious about the annoyances that people would have wanted to fuse me with contrary to mine staple of habit. Everyone congratulated me being able, in fact, to usher in the right to have his own property in the dispensation of medicine, the reception which was given to my work prompted me to accept leather sacks of new observations in specimens under private review, of which I had a fruitful volume of leaves and seeds ground into dusts and powders, which appeared to me last year in the tomes of herbariums collected from travels across the courts of Europa.

If tolerance, as for opinions, is a quality necessary for the good of society and the progress of science, it is not the same with regard to slander.

A man, to whom I have not spoken of my life, although we have lived in the same city for some time, M. Samoïlowitz, formerly a surgeon, preferably a doctor of medicine, slanders me in the most grateful way in a work to the head of which have the names of several washing societies; in a work, that even he has dedicated it to this great Sovereign whom I had the honor to fervor, and who deigned to protect me.

I have dedicated it to this great Sovereign whom I had the honor to fervor, and who deigned to protect me.

THE PLAGUE DOCTOR: "TREATISE ON THE PEST" (1784)[CONTAINING THE STORY OF THAT WHICH REIGNED IN MOSCOW in 1771];
By Charles de Mertens, Doctor of Medicine;
Member of the Faculties of Vienna & Strasbourg, (above).

NOTICE: This edition prefers, as for the text, 'only what has been published above in Latin; the increases consist,' in addition to the introduction, into several notes, to which, to distinguish them from the old ones, an asterisk (*) has been added.

English Translation:TypeHost Free Press (2020).

INTRODUCTION

"With thy grim looks and the thunder-like
percussion of thy sounds, Thou madst
thine enemies shake, as if the world
Were feverous and did tremble."

+ Titus L'artius: 'Las Carolinas' (1607):

In chapter XXIV, & other places in my book titled: 'Mémoire für la Pestie' (printed in Paris in 1783) "it reads:". (pag. 80) that I did not, as I have advanced, recognize the pest at the beginning (/ O ^ 2 ^.), he says (pag. 74) that I have never allied to any of the assemblies in the tint that the contagion was in fury (c):3 ".(77-78) that I did not build up the maison of the found children of Moscow (c):4°. (pag. 78) that I did not care for & treat in a maison except for the children found & the orphans whose parents were dead of the child; that M. de Durnowo foul fuel in fawn twenty-slept (e):5°. (pag. 7'5) it is false that on the arrival of Count Orlow I was particularly confused, & that, as I marked in my treaty, I gave my opinion frantically & in writing; because i were not even then any more in the city (f):6”. he also says (pag. 74 & 75) that I have appropriated the observations of others and wrote only according to hearsay; that I saw at most only three patients attacked with the shovel, and that at the beginning, where it was impossible to fuse all the symptoms involved, the external vignette is provided in figures of repose.(^)

He also reports (pag. 73) that I said in the Senate: 35 (i.e. 'having never seen the shovel, do not know the internal ornaments, the external figs, "qiûa in faith, i poli vocis" which did not meet the question of faith.'(33)

"Mars, I prithee, make us quick in work,
That we with smoking swords may march from hence,
To help our fielded friends! Come, blow thy blast."

[Quoit: "It was the pestie. oil »no. î3!"] It is true that I spoke in the Rude language before the assembled Senators, that I had never seen the bastard; but instead of the pest of this period, I added, that the evil which was then in Moscow was different from ordinary & known diseases, & faith resembling in all its symptoms with the letter Pi, such as the best authors describe it, which I take God as a witness, that I was perfused that it was her. The proofs of what I am doing do, besides the crazy pieces N°. i, & the content of the certificates & of the letter of M. dç Yeropkin who was preferent as Senator, what M. Orreus (/;) 29: said briefly, that except two doctors (Kuhlmann & Schiadan) all the others pronounced then that it was the peste, & that they bore testimony of it to the ruling Senate. It was at the end of March that we were commissioned to the Senate, and that the one who reported my pretended declaration, the who found himself around Moscow around this time, was intrigued by everything that related to the poor. I myself, says M. Samoïlowitz (Ibid. page 74), ”being major surgeon of the Senate [C ainfi] (at the end of the year 1771, or even later) I have heard several times our Senators advocate the author.” It is me that he stands for. The Senators would certainly not have advocated a doctor who would have given an inept and ineffective response, other than that which I believe I made in one of the most critical moments for the well-being of 'a large part of this Empire waite, cabals of wickedness and envy, joined to the ignorance of three doctors (/ :), could fool me, because I had pronounced first (/), that the disease which showed it was the shovel; by what astonishing contradiction must I say that I see myself, more than twelve years later, publicly against having overlooked it then? This is what I would never have expected.

By what singularity of finger is it necessary, that after having the ring of St. Foulert for several months at the beginning of 1771, 5 read a large part of the Rulfe nation, the defragements (i) that they then in, .Befrarabia or in Wallachia: see the "Memoir of M. Samoïlowitz" as the shovel, & c. (pag. 66, 67, & 68).

"I {h) M. Orreu§ relates to this spindle in a treaty of the shovel, which has just appeared in St. Petersburg for this title: Gustav-(i) Orrœi 'descriptio pestiis'," (c Petropoli, 1784 pcg).

To answer all these accusations, I will produce authentic testimonies. I did not infer in the Latin edition these incontestable proofs of what I said, because I did not know that one could revoke in doubt, and even less deny, what had been made a few years ago crazy for the eyes of so many people. Besides, the more honorable these testimonies, the less I thought it appropriate for me to publish them, the goldsmith did not seem to oblige me to do so; now I see myself forced to confuse slander.

5. PARTS RELATING TO THE PLAGUE OF MOSCOW

(Æ) I did not name them in the Latin edition, these names having little interest to the public: I was on the contrary, bent on making known most of those who had deserved praise, to the number of which MM. Lado & Sibelin, who have already had neighborhoods in the city to work, must also be put.

(/) In the assembly of doctors of December 22, 1770. 1OI was responsible for reporting to M. le Field Maréchal Comte de SoltikolF, Gouverneur of the province.

I. T-7: A letter from M. de Bachmetew, Lieutenant of police of Moscow, after the written leak that I gave on December 23, 1770 to the Governor-General. You will find everything in note at the bottom of the page. 7 & fuiv.

N: ".IL" On behalf of the council of the Trusteeship ran au his education at Imperial Moscow:

"We four filignéts, Mr. Attestons the "Docteur Charles Mertens himself not w feulement acquitted, while six years con-"Executive, with the Imperial maison" of education in Moscow, of all the duties "Attached to the office of doctor, with 53 vigilance, zeal & skill of the most distingued; but that he has carried hay 33 für all that could generally 33 identify the public good. This merit in him 33 has never exploded better than in the unfortunate times of the shovel 33 which has wreaked such havoc in the capital. So he was the main support of those who were in charge of inspection as the so-called maison, 33 whose hay, good advice and the 33 sorrows he gave himself, {this terrible scourge} 33 has been hijacked. He also helped those 33 who oversee the general police, to stop the progress of this delusional evil, by lending them their help everywhere at the risk of their own life. In confidation of 33 all these services, the trusteeship, 33 to mark the gratitude emcère à M; 33 DE Mertens, believing it to be my duty to 33 give him the prefect appellate of ”recognition, framed by the main faiths ”members & provided with a stamp.“ Faith ascendant to Moscow, this June 10 iŸ74-

The First Curator: Jean Betzkov

The Curators:

Adrien Lopouchîn

M Alexandre Pavlov

Prince Michel Dolgoroukov

Pierre Naschtsokin

Serge Nasonov *

55.I confronted the preferable translation- > 5 sections of the above-mentioned attack, delivered to Mr. Docéteur Charles de Mertens by the Council of Trusteeship of the Imperial Maison "Of education in Moscow, & found it in" everything consistent with the original. In faith whereof I have lined the same traducción of my name, "by adding the stamp of my arms * 5 Done at Vienna this lo November N. St." (1774)

"I would not be able to express you too much, My-flower, the false satisfaction that I receive when I learn ^, as you mark me, that our wishes have touched the sky, & that the calamity that has faith orig-tems affligées has totally surrounded the city, & that everything there resumes."

(m) The original of this letter is in François, & rendered here word for word; as well as the other letters from M. de Betzky.

xvij. 'Septic end son train accustomed. But this window is redoubled in me, when I confirm that providence has been kind enough to fully guarantee our maison ”Scourge au faith fire crueL: The main glory you “is due ^ Monsieür 4 it is to your zeal “tireless, to your hay, to your lights“ that it is indebted, after God, in favor: this truth which will be bounded neither by the places nor by the weather, be it well persuaded, as well as with all the justice that will be returned to you; your conduct has forced the urge to even admire you & c.'

I have the honor of being & c.

+ SIGNED:J. BETZK Yi ^ N °. IV;

7. Traduccêion of the Certificate of SEM lé Général de TeropkiN-(i).

»Certificate which is given to M. le dodeuc » DE Mertens, in that as for the occasion on faith oil and the yellow fire: "Of the contagious disease which arrived at Moscow-Uî 'in the year 1771, I was charged by special order "with His Imperial Majesty of hay to take "the necessary precautions against said disease, it affected the general assemblies of all the doctors who made holes - ”viéws in this city, & by faiths praised praises gave useful means for the ex-expiration of this dangerous, eupheumistic faith disease, by where it made not see not only the favor of “fon art“, but gold faith from zeal & from empressement for the public good. In witness whereof I gave him the preferred certificate, Signed with my hand and provided with my ordinary stamp." [At Moscow on April 19, 1773.]

53.The preferred translation was made at the -- 3 Chancellery of the legation of Ruflie in "Vienna, and found everything in accordance with the true sense of the original. What I reach 53 by my figure. In Vienna this 23 December 1775.” - Grégoire de PoleTika 53 Conveiller de légation by Ruflie; (3 i).

"Affirmed, as I flee from so much evidence, how 33 your Excellency's heart 33 is filled with sentiments of humanity;" (8 c)

(/ i) It was M. de Yéropkin himself who sent me the duplicate of this letter, sending me a letter to pass it to M. of Betzky.

"How much it is always carried to the genealogy & to all the virtues fans except, I take the liberty to recommend to you 55 M. the doctor of Mertens, of which 55 the merits, the driving distingué & für - 55 all the zeal and entanglement he has shown 55 in the contagious disease, 55 oblige me to render him justice. Charged 55 the hay of the maison hay of the children- +3 fans found, & fans be defined for the 53 districts of the city, he did not miss this- 55 while for my zeal for the public good, +5 when the dust-dice disease was more +5 high period of malignancy, to inflict on all the consultations of the doctors here, & to take part in the search for remedies & necessary precautions, by distant 53 always sentient with a particular imprisonment 55, which was fuivi of fuc- +3 ces & delirious advantage. For 35 such confusions, he was invited 55 times in my maison with all the doctors; he spared no fatigue or penalty, although he was not obliged to do so by duty (o). 'Furthermore, crazy about the "divine providence", he had so many "Far from diverting the fatal accidents of the Maison, of which Your Excellency is the founder, that all the children who are raised there have been perfectly preserved. All this gives me a fair reason to pray 55 Your Excellency to grant this worthy 55 man faith protection & fon distance allegiance, 55 so that he can get the reward 55 he deserved; by this it will make him redouble his praiseworthy zeal, & will oblige me-

(o) When I was asked for the Rulie in 1767, he was stipulated by my contract, made with the agreement of my- Sovereigns, that , for the protection of His Imperial JV la jefté, I would have for chiefs M. de Betzky & the conveil of the education maison: moreover, on my arrival in Moscow, where the court was then, Her Majesty the Empress was kind enough to order by a uk-q faith, that I would have the free exercise of the practice fans be examined to | medical college; so I do not depend in any way on this college, or on my Prefect.

Even in my particular by paying attention to the testimony that I prefer to 33 it in respect.
It is with this hope that I flatter myself, and with which I have the honor to be.

Signed: 33 Pierre Yeropkin. * 3

33 The translation of the above letter to 33 been made at the Chancellery of the legation 33 of Ruffie in Vienna, & faith found in all 33 conforms to the true faith in fans of Porigina-f 33. What I harness by my figure. In Vienna 33 this: (23 December 1775).

Signed: 33 Grégoire de Poletika [33 Ruffie legation conveiller. ('3)]

33. Béspokifje of SEM de Betzkt.

33 Pétersbotirg on: [20 Aviil 1772]: with letter ^ where was included that of M. le Gén-Iitérati DE TeROFKIN.

"Nothing is more satisfying for me, 3' Monsieqnor, than to have General Yeropkin's ^ pat M. ”confirm the judgment I have always made of you; the '(praise, re- »» Pandus in the letter which accompanied your?/Yours of the 12th of this month, make all the more flattering, that coming from such a share, they «carry a general suffrage, Sc can not leave any doubts that they have not been deserved. I will make use of the letter of this ”General, & I am delirious with all my heart * 55 that after having communicated it where it is appropriate, 55 it refute for you, Monsieur, 55 all the good elf effects that you must you ^ 5 promise & c."

55 The hay that you have always had from (p) Village [a few -warlocks de Moscow,] where the particular message returned from C.P. Panini was:

» 'Fill your foundations with dignity, your M services towards my homeland, & the danger » empressant that you have run (^) & maybe 35 still cover in this puneste 33 occurrence, will not refute fans doubt point 33 fans the fair reward they deserve, 33 when our incomparable Sovereign & 33 the Company will learn them. This is what I care for infinitely, & what I offer you 33 respond at the same time as the eftime 33 which is due to you, & which in particular for you & c.'

Signed: 33 Count P. Panini. (3)

VIL. The order of M. de Yeropkin of September 30 , 1771, with the fix points proposed by M. le Comte Orlo [\ v], & my ravages of the post in town had obliged this Lord to withdraw me towards the end of August. (7) During the revolt, which began on September 15, 1771. responds. [Note: I have inferred them as a note at the bottom of page 29 & fuiv. ' N *'. VIII]. The approval of the Conveil de fanté, for the maison of quarantine that I had established, & the letters of M. de B etzky on the same subject; (see the note at the bottom of page 140 & fuiv).

IX. From all these documents, we can see how TalTertion, which I have not had the opportunity to see three times the pestle, is far from the truth; all the more so as it turned out, since I did not leave the city during the year in which this scourge smeared so many thousands of men who fooled my eyes; that I have stopped progress to slept reprives among the soldats & the workers of the education maison, & different times in that of quarantine intended for children & women in childbirth.

19. Introduction of the Plague in Moscow (1771).

The performances which I have just quoted ^ people of the first division and occupying confidable places, are still alive; they were (r) all prefers to Iofcou during the time of the little one, and by common eyewitnesses. The one, on the contrary, who publishes with so much slander slander and absurdity on my account, was, by my own admission, arrived in Moscow only in June (r), lix months after the peste had started there; & a paste the months of July j (r) M. DE B AND ZKY, which his charges attached' • particularly to the personality of the Sovereign, who was in St. Petersburg. As the first Curator of the May-education fund, he received at least once per woman, from Conveil & the first Impedetir, the newspaper of what was done there, & was also well informed of what was happening to Moscow für-all during the pest to view.

(j) "Memory as soon as possible", & c. by M. Samoïlôwità (pag. 8i.)

Introduction, xxvij of August & of September (t) in the hospitals of the peste & in the quarantines, from where it could not grow. Besides that it is not honest to whomever it is to want to make parade of mad patriotisme while seeking to depress the services of the foreigners towards faith homeland; it is surely to insult the Ruife nation, that to believe him please by slandering them. I will always preserve with the keenest appreciation the souvenir processes of the Grands de la RulEe towards me * as well as those of the noblesse & the inhabitants of Moscow, who, during the fîx years that I passéd in this city ("), have honored me with their esteem & their trust, & have crowned their kindnesses for me by the regrets they have shown at the time of my departure. This is therefore to the Company. - (Ibid. pag. 91.)

(b) I never run away from Moscow twenty-four hours on the run during the fixed years of my stay in this city; & I only left for ten-eight months after the girl had completely died there:

"The very triodes of M. Samoïlowitz, to the jet gells of letters, to the honest people of all countries, & to the washing fodder whose names adorn the title of my book, which I am talking about, leaving them my cauffe (x). It is enough for me to have brought incontestable proofs of the truth of what I had advanced; Evidence which confirms that I have fled with all the zeal possible for the preservation of my femables, for the good of the country where I live, & to respond to the beneficent views of the great Sovereign that I have the advantage of fervor, which I had in These circumstances make it so that in many others, there is room to admire your genius and maternal hay for the well-being of your spindles.

{x) I dispense me to make any further comment Furies writings of Mr. Samoïlowitz, and to get in difficult, as für matters where we fumes not of the same opinion, my way of thinking and my occupations "me éloi- Gnant" -absolutely everything that is of the polemical genre. Besides, I stand by what I wrote because it is the truth. ^

TREATISE ON THE PEST - CHAPTER I: ["The History of the Plague which reigned in Moscow in 1771"]

The little one had, at the beginning of the tenth fiftieth century, for the last time ravaged the town of Moscow, and had not appeared there since that time. During the Turkish War of 1736, she had been among the RulTe garrison of Oczukow, from where she was transported to Ukraine; but then it did not penetrate further (a). In 1769 war began between the Rulfs & the Turks. We learned in the following year, that the Turks saw the paste brought to Vachachia & Moldavia, that it wreaks havoc there, & that many Ruffes had died in the city of YalTa from a disease, which at the beginning some had named malignant fever, but which the best doctors had recognized as the little one. Baron d'Afcli, first doctor of the army, gave the German description of this disease in a letter to Von Frere, medical practitioner of Moscow, who communicated it to me; here is the translation: “It attacks humans in 53 different ways; some 55 are slightly ill, faith complaining about 53 within a few days of a headache, like 53 that given by the vapors of the charcoal, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, even sometimes stinging & coming back. They 33 Try vague pain at intervals 33 in the chest & all in the neck; they gradually become weak and sorrowful, like intoxicated and drowsy. They have a peculiar taste in the mouth, which changes from fleeting to bitterness; their urine is hot 33 (which happens frequently at the beginning of the fevers) 33 these symptoms are followed by 53 cold, hot, and finally of all those of Mo f-neck. ^ the little girl confirmed. Critical smoke sometimes ends the disease before the eruption of exanthemes & tumors. Those "who contagion affect faster & more violently, suddenly attack" ^ 53 either at the end of a meal too strong, or at the 53 escape from an outburst of anger or an exercise 53 too violent, headache, shipwreck 53 with vomit semens; their eyes are inflamed and tearful; in memetems 53 they cause pain in places where the buboes' 3 & the coals must grow. The heat 33 of the fever is not confidable but the pulse 33 is sometimes full & hard, sometimes small ^ 53 soft & barely sensible ^ intermittent , but mostly weak; All of this essence of 53 accompanied by faith, the white tongue 53, the skin, the lemon-colored urine 33, or cloudy, but rather sedentary; 33 many have diarrhea that is difficult to stop 53; finally the delusions, the buboes 5 the 53 coals, the pestechiae join it. The summer fleeing this evil entered Poland I made a great devastation; from there he was brought to Kiow, where he kidnapped four thousand men. All trade was first interrupted between this City & Moscow I put (')guarded fùels across^* les highways,' & they ordered about forty a few senialines for those who wanted to pay off.“

(a) M. Schreiber, then professor e'Fleur of Medicine at the Academy of Pétersboiirg, gave "a histoîre of this little madman" for the title in: "Observat.^ et cogitât," from 'pestiilentîa' [qua 1738" ^ 1739] Ukrania graphlita: [(-i.)„ the "(*Y.)East-Ice":)-c)] [eJL As]

At the end of November 1770, the professor of anatomy at the military hospital of Moscow was attacked by putrid pestechial fever, which prevailed on the third day. The nurses of the same hospital lived with their families in two rooms separated from the others. In one of these rooms they fall ill one after the other, so that all of them, eleven in number, including the women, have an acute putrid disease with pestechiae; in some of them there were buboes and coals; most die between the third & fifth day. The same problem with feminizable symptoms also prevails in the nurses in the other room.

On December 22nd we are summoned to the medicine counter; the first doctor of the military hospital makes the report that I have just given: three other doctors are waiting for the truth, and all of them are said to include fifteen people, both nurses and theirs. women & children have died of this disease since the end of November; that five are still attacked by it, and that besides this disease can't be found anywhere in the hospital. Of the eleven doctors that we were, none hesitated to name this evil the scythe, except the doctor of the city ​​who, having been called several times by M. Schafonsky in these patients, had pronounced that it was a simple putrid fever, & the Was still doing it verbally & in writing.

NOTE:In the Latin edition there is a mistake here on the 23rd instead of the 22nd of Moscow. (5)

This hospital is outside the city near the suburb of the Germans, from which it is separated by a small river called Tauda. We advised to close it first & to surround it with soldats which prevent any communication; we asked that we put all the nurses with their wives & their children in a separate place, separating the sick from the healthy; that the clothes and the furniture, both of those who still live, and of the dead, were burned. The cold started later this year; the way was humid & rainy until the end of December; then came a heavy frost, which lasted for the winter.

5. Letter from Moscow (-y).

M. Kinder.

In addition to our joint report, M. le Field-Marshal Comte de Soltikoff again denounced me my particular resentment, ^ wanted me to point out to him what I think there was to be done in these circumstances. I did not hesitate in a great danger of public choice, to give my opinion in a clear way & fans detour. Ainli, therefore, in a writing which I gave to the Governor-General, I mainly infiltrated the need to take all the possible precautions with regard to the hospital, where I affirmed that the little one was among the nurses; I added that it was necessary to do exact research to favor the contagion was nowhere hidden in the city; & that wherever we find it, we have to stop it in the same way. That for this purpose it was necessary to order the doctors & surgeons, that, if they meet some choke extraordinary or doubtful among their patients, they immediately report it to a medical counter; to order the officers and prefects of the police, to call doctors as soon as several people fall ill in the same town hall. I confessed, however, that the choke would be very difficult, if there were other places in the -(y) village-q of Moscow. '7 infedantes; but I must say, that in this mixed case, one could still try to suffocate these sparks during the great cold, provided that it was done in the proper manner, and fans were late. (b).

* (b) Here is this writing throughout, as I refer to it put in French at Field-Maréchal Comte de Soltikoff. [December 23, 1770.]

"The report of the doctor of the large hospital of 55 Moscow, having convinced me, as well as the 55 doctors of this town gathered, that the little girl is actually +5 in this hospital among the guards. sick, 55 he only refuses to take all the precautions 55 posslibles to prevent her from communicating faith 55 further, which would make the greatest misfortune which +5 could arrive at a city austi populated, & where fans doubt 55 it would make terrible havoc. In the assembly that we held yesterday between physicians, we gave together the report of what we believe 55 geons necessary to prevent this misfortune."

55:HE Mr. Field-Maréchal having asked me for my opinion in particular, 55 I will detail to him 55 what my love for the public good fugue re: 55 in a case that is critical. The pest is an evil which 55 only communicates through the immediate touching 53 of the pestifere themselves, or of the clothes and furniture 55 which they make fervent of; & not widespread in the air, 55 although the different constitutions of the atmosphere donations that we awarded for the military hospital, cauter panic terror throughout the city. It was in vain that we sought to raise the courage of the inhabitants.

I-We wanted to keep all this hidden for the public; but the noise of the shovel which, a few months before had afflicted Kiow, had so disposé the minds, that the precaution can more or less distort our bodies to take ”the infection. Ceciposté, in the case where we find ourselves, 55 in my opinion, like that of the other doctors, 55 is that we surround the great hospital with soldats, which do not let enter or fortify, and which intercept all communication with the city's rebel. The 55 medical counter will give information. to the 55 doctor of this hospital, both for the treatment of the 55 pestiférés, and to put the reste of those who make 55 them locked up there, safe from contagion. 11 is absolutely necessary that the guard soldats have not 55 no communication with those who work inside 55 of the hospital, whose doors must be closed, 55 This first guard will always do the same; he devroit there be another in cà of the bridge, and in 55 all the streets about different hospitals. As 55 this one will have nothing in common with the first, 55 it can be relieved by new stakes, 55 It can send a quantity of sufficient provisions 55 for several months, food of any cC- 55 species, such as flour, barley, rice, tsp. both for the 55 patients and for the employees; & linen, linen, 55 ordinary clothes, & c. There must be an outfitter 55 responsible for buying everything that we can also P. fiYQÎi'befüiii, & clue it has no communication from Moscow. 9

(+55). Action with recluses; he will receive a daily ticket 55 from the hospital's treasurer; this note will passé with vinegar & 55 scented; according to that he will do the shopping, 95 for meat, & other necessary chokes, & the 55 will transport until the middle of the bridge. When he has faith 55 will withdraw with his people, the thrifty from the inside 95 come and take them as soon as each one has asked for them. These two jobs require people of recognized probity. All of this must be observed until there is no longer the least bit of pest in this place, forty-five days after; It’s the lightest way to prevent 95 the infelion from reaching the city on this side.

(-55). The source of evil coming from Ukraine, everything will do 99 in vain, & we will have new 99 alarms every day, faith to all those who come from this province, 95 do not have to keep the most frankly 99 about forty fix females, between the places where 99 the small reigns & the government of Moscow, fans 99 having regard to the condition or to the rank of the people. For this purpose, the cords must be drawn 99 so that no one can slip them from any other side, except through the places where the officers and surgeons who command them are found.

9. Plague Aphorisms.

"The social appearance of the orders should not be too low as to become common, as events proceed for the assumption of leadership in the administration of pre-marked regional topgraphies by stealth." ^ ^

But a few days later, when it was learned that in the hospital itself there were only fept nurses attacked by this disease, & that the Once again, it was free, we fell into a too strong cloud; because where it goes public, it “There is no longer any particular confidance. It would be necessary, moreover, that at a distance of ten or twenty 55 wafers of Moscow round (following the number of "soldats which can be employed") a full cord was drawn, where the paisans w were required certificates of the places where they come from from q to 55 of the first cord, or quarantine tickets 55 signed by the officers & surgeons, if they come from 55 from there. For quarantines of the most distant cord, it is necessary to choose villages close to the great roads; take the best maisons, the 55 well ventilate & flavor; & if it is there 55 some traveler attacked with a shovel, send him back 55 to a village farther away, where there will be a lazaretto 55 with a surgeon & several crazy surgeons, 55 so as not to infest those who hold quarantine. Couriers coming from the armies, will no longer be able to go beyond this first cord, and will 55 put their scented & palpated packages at the vinaL 55 gre, to others who will take them to their destination, 55 Voila, to my opinion, the average fire to fever the city 55 of Moscow & faiths surroundings; but all this must be observed to the last rigor; for an exceptional fire can ruin it. This is MofcoîL II, another extreme, and faith believing in full prosperity, the great, the nobles, the merchants, the common people, in a word, all the inhabitants, 35 seeking to discover the endion is not already in the city; for this purpose, all police officers must be required to inform themselves in their reflexive quarters, as soon as a person dies, how many times she has been sick, and what kind of illness.: & as long as there is some cost of 55 fünf-pecl, the surgeon of the police must make the infection 55 of the corpse, & the necessary searches. If someone is found to be dying of the shovel, 35 take the same precautions as those 55 indicated above for the hospital; surround the maison with boys, & c, fl it is among the common people, send all those 55 who have been with the patient, to a hospital 35 that can be done in a district distant from the city, & fully separated. During all this time of 35 wolves & calamities, each surgeon 35 in the hands of whom he dies a patient, 35 should send a note to the medicine counter, 35 where he would mark of what illness he died, at 35 minus, if there is some shovel plug.

Signed: C. Mertens.

M. le Comte de Soltiholî sent from the nth day this memoir in Court, A short time later, at the beginning of January, M. de Bachmetew, police chief of Mofeou, in'enjoya the fuivante-j letter except the governor & a small number of persons, wanted more to hear about precautions.

(55) His Excellency M. de Tschitfcherin, Lieutenant- General of the police, has just forwarded to me 55 dries of His Imperial Majesty, of the fleeting content:

55:'Try to see the doctor Mertens, and give him 53 the question; if it is not better in the 55 preferred circumstances, hold all the rooms 55 of the hospital cold, as is practical with 55 those where faith find the people who subiflate 55 the inoculation of small pox. It seems that it would be 53 even better to refrain the sick for 53 a couple of days, while it is very cold, 55 to evacuate a few rooms to ventilate them well, and to carry them away sick, the 55 rooms being in this way alternately ra-53 fresh, they can be heated, as long as it is at a moderate temperature. I would kindly ask you to offer this opinion to Mr. Mertens on my part, so that he can go in confusion there with all the other doctors; & in case one or the other of them ®5 does not want to run away from this method, provided that it is Mofcoti. 13 pinioii of the physician of the city, lasted until "adopts him, or someone of those who obey 33 that of Damasclaean inoculation of small 33 pox; so we only have to keep the sick in the 33 cold rooms, fans pay attention to the opinion of the 33 ^ other doctors. I'm writing this to you by order of Sa 33 Imperial Majesty, so that you confuse defTus there 33 Mr. Mertens, & that we stay away from it to the method he deems fit to adopt.'

33 Like all that I have just written to you above was 33 an exaécta copy of the order which was sent to me 33 by SEM de Tschitfcherin; I stand to persuadé +3 that you will not fail to act in conformity with the perfume.

33 I flee forever, Monsieur,

33 Your very humble fervitor,

Signed: 33 Nicolas BACHMETEW, 33 [Moscow; this (t) January 1771]*

33 The prefect translation was made at the Chancellery of the Rufie Legation in Vienna, and found 33 in all to conform to the true meaning of the original. This 33 that I reach by my figure. In Vienna this December 23rd, 1775-33 Grégoire de Poletika, 33 Conveiller de légation by Ruffie. (3+)

One can judge by the contents of this letter, of the solicitude of Her Majesty the Empress for the conference(-).

(f) There is in [original only] the date of tanning ^ of the month; that the day has been forgotten, the laijjee place \ white.

14. Short story of the short month of March.

There was no longer a quellion of doctors. All the precautions were, in spite of us, neglected in town: there was only in the military hospital that by precise order of faith Majestlé Impériale i glorieufenient ré-inconvenient, on les observoit; & that the little girl extinguished there after attacking twenty-four nurses, from which two escaped. Six females after the death of the last, all effects, clothes, beds, & c. who had left them, were burnt with the wood filler where they had remained. The hospital was reopened in late February.

The vulgar, who judges des chokes only by leaks, calls shovel, any disease which has taken away several thousand men; & never believes that she exiles, unless a large number of dead have confirmed it. In addition, a lot of people make head, I don't ovation les fuse sects; how much the genius of this great Prince made her envive the chokes in their true point of view, and flew to her, in addition to the necessary precautions, the most suitable regime against the shovel. This was what ended her up happily at military hospital. If the inhabitants of Mofeou had not been reduced by deceitful appearances & by false pretensions, to the point of neglecting all the precautions, we would probably have been happy at the sheet factory, than at home hospital to Moscow. 15 by what riff, that the beast is a plague that falls from the sky, and suddenly kills legions men. We find in prefect all the histories of the shovel, that this prejudice has always been the main reason, which has prevented us from being opposed to its progress from the beginning. We can compare the beginning of the shovel to an easily extinguishing spark; but which, abandoned, will excite a fire that nothing can stop.

The opinion which flatter public safety prevailed generally, as it always prefers (c). He didn't give us away (c) I then had a lot more defragements to flee than my colleagues, having been the first to name the peste, & everyone so angry that I was besides that gave a separate declaration, so that we take all the profitable precautions, and that we made the most exaetient researches; I had also a confident practice; so the cries of those who believe we were wrong, fell mainly on me, since they thought I had misled the other doctors.

The clamor of those who denied that it was the bastard, first disturbed the spirits; and when the calamity had reached its highest degree, by joining superstition and defeat, they carried a people, moreover good and docile, to the excesses of which I will mention below. that the tranquility of conscience, and the feeling of having acted as learned doctors & good citizens. Would to God that the choices are puff connected there, & that the event would not have confirmed the truth of what we had advanced! We would not have seen the destruction of so many of our semblets, & we would not have witnessed the most horrible public calamity.

On March 1, 1771, we are summoned again to the medical counter. There was in the center of the city a Maison valley, made up near the river, which was used for a sheet-making factory for the army: three were occupied there. a thousand workers from the two sexes, about a third of them from the poorest class, were on the ground floor; the others, after having worked there during the day, returned to the fair at their home in different districts of the city. M. Yagelsky, then a fertile doctor at the military hospital, whom the Governor- General had sent in the morning to this factory, tells us that he found there some patients (eight, I am not mistaken) attacked with the same disease, which 'he had seen three months before in the nurses of the military hospital, with pestechiae, vibices, coals and bushes;

17. Letter from Müfcou.

"All good; he also tells us that he saw fept cadavers which bore the same marks. When he questioned the workers of this factory, to find out how and since when this evil had started there, they confessed to him that at the beginning of January, a woman who had a tumor on the cheek, had taken refuge in one of her parents who lived there, that she had died at his home: that, from that moment, daily someone among them had been attacked by this disease. They further agree, that from that time until this day, counting the septic corpses which were not yet buried, one hundred and ten leprosy people were dead there. This relation of M. Yagelsky was confirmed to us by two other physicians, who had also been sent there the same day to take notice of the sick and the dead bodies. We declare again in a written address to the Governor-General & to the sénate (who had summoned us) that this disease is shoveling (d), & we require them to make fortify of the city all those who live in this, by preparing the sick from the healthy; we ask that we burn the effects of the dead & the sick; & let us carry out the most exaggerated searches, to find out if there was nowhere else in the city some hidden seed germ. Terror takes hold again of all minds: we see what negligence in observing precautions has produced."

"We were then thirteen sick doctors (^), of whom two, who three months previously had given us the name of peste at the disease of the nurses of the hospital, differs actually that this was not the small, but putrid fever; they marked it goldline faith in relations apart from the senate. These two doctors, who, with most of the surgeons, now of opinion contrary to ours, had been induced into this error, by seeing that the number of deaths in the city was not increased, may * rather be less than the previous years, & that there were very few patients."

NOTE: (-r) The town doctor at the end of February had a gangrenous ulcer on his leg, which prevented him from finding himself at this assembly; he died soon after. (^) Kuhlmann & Schiadan.

19. Letter from Mofiou.

'A few days later, having been sent to the faith bt the * senate with the other ^ doctors & surgeons ^ so that each of us openly declared sentiment, I called God to witness that I was persuadé que the maladie which it eats, was really the shovel (/); ten of my colleagues were in my favor, and the two in which they were of the opposite opinion (j); they admit, however, that it was not necessary to reject all the precautions against an evil, which * although it was not the shovel * nevertheless had some contagious things on the first day (March 11) faith palsea de "liberate; the inferior maison is closed; guards are placed in it, so that no one enters or strengthens it; many of those found there "closed faith to far flee by the windows j the such elf-t transported during the night hots of the city-s, the fains with the convent of Saint "Simon j & les maladies" to that of Saint-Nicolas, of which one kell to hex-fix, & l-other to eight werldles. These monasteries are surrounded by high walls, Sc have only one ilfue leaf. As some dead dead people were found among the workers of this factory, who "de ineuro ien-f" in their own mailoris, we locked these in a third brood 4, also fistulé outside of the city. The surgeons, who cared for all these people, were ordered to send the lives of the sick and the dead to the medical counter daily. Doctors were chosen who had to make sure that everything that concerned the treatment of the sick, the preservation of those in quarantine, and the bean fever of the dead, was exactly observed. The doctors Erasmus & Yagelsky ih ') deserved a lot of the public, by fulfilling these two jobs. When someone who was in quarantine fell ill, they kept him in a separate room, until lines appeared. peste, & then he was transported in a car - by men de faith need for this purpose, to the hospital of the peste, otherwise St. Nicolas.'

The public baths, where the people used to go at least once per woman, were closed. The town was divided up into a quarter, each of whom was given a doctor with two surgeons, so that all the sick and all the dead bodies would flee examinations. *

* (A) Both had since died.

21. Letter from Moscow.

Mined. Police officers were added to them. Burials in the city were forbidden, they were assigned suitable places. from different sides, some distance from the city. Their statua wrote, that if he found someone from the base people attacked with a shovel, they would take him to the hospital of Saint Nicholas, and that after having burned the effects, they would retain those who lived in the same room, in public places outside the city for forty days: whether such a choke arrived in the maison of a bourgeois or a nobleman, all the domestics who lived in the same room as the patient, would be kept in these quarantines, & that the master with all the family should be kept in his own house for eleven days. All this was confirmed, and brought into the form of a law, by a reform of the Sénate. Mr. General Peter Demitrewifchde Yeropkin (z)- man so distinguished by his manners and his virtues social, by his birth & "Faith for Anthem", was appointed by His Majesté the Empress Direcêteur-General of Fantasy.

There were not yet many people who, w sulfide retentant, convinced that the peste had arrived until Moscow. M. Qrreus, niédeçin de Par-'mée, who having, on his own initiative, taken the treatment of the pestiferous in Yaffi, at the time passage then by Moscow, however to return to St. Petersburg, was required to revive the sick and the corpses which I mentioned above; what having done, he affirmed that this disease resembled entirely that which, having few tints before, made great ravages in Moldavia & in Wallachia; & that it was really the bastard. This was further confirmed by the Docéteur Lœrch, who then returned from Kiow, where he had stopped since the previous year, while the child was there.

* (i) As well as pronounces this name, which is written in RulTe, Eropkin.

The tint resta very cold until the middle of April, which made the Indian firm more fixed & more inadequate, attacking only those who died with the infected. In the peste hospital, he died only three or four a day; & manufacturers who were in their quarantine, he only fell ill about as much.

23. Letter from De Jill of Coil.

According to reports from doctors, neighborhood surgeons, and police officers, the city looks foolish. Everyone prefers to believe that the doctors who appointed this disease the bitch, had told fables; the others doubt it. The chokes remained there until mid-June, and during this time there were about two hundred dead at St. Nicolas hospital. The name-bre of the sick and the dead diminished there day by day, to the point even that during a whole female, although the tailon was very hot, personne did not fall ill with the shovel, & that it did not return to the hospital only a few convalescents: there was no longer any vertigo of loss in the city.

As among the workmen of the factory, who had remained in town, and had been put, for quarantine, in a monastery distant from the two others, he had not been, during the space of two months, found per-attacked from the loss, they were allowed to return home:

'We were starting to operate while the loss had been completely stifled by the precautions we had taken. We barely enjoy the happiness of being able to indulge in this sweet hope that, towards the end of June, people are caught in the same pain in Saint-Simon hospital, where quarantine was. In a niaifon in the Sausbourg Préobraginsky, the July 2, a dead person died in a night (A '), a fiftieth who had stayed with them fled: we find the corpses of livid spots, buboes & coals, On the fuivans days there are many sick people among the people of various districts of the city; & the mortality increases to the point, that the dead man's crab, which was usually ten to fifteen a day, & which, even in the tins of epidemics of putrid fevers, as in previous years, does not wane not thirty, goes up at the end of July to two hundred in twenty-four hours. We found the sick and the dead bodies, large, livid pestechiae and vibices; many had coals and buboes; some died, or in the space of twenty-four hours, before the buboes and the coals puff out; but most of them are third or fourth day. In mid-August, the number of dead from 3 Iofcou, 25 rose daily to four hundred, & at the end of the same month until fixed hundred; (we then saw more buboes & coals than in July); at the beginning of September there were seventy hundred dead a day; a few days later there were days- eight hundred, and soon after there were a thousand. The contagion faith spread more when, during the time of the revolt which began on September 15 at the fair, the furious populace opened the hospitals and the quarantines, reestablished all the ecclesiastical ceremonies of use around the sick (/) & buried the dead again in the city. The people started again, fleeing their ancient custom to embark the dead; he no longer wanted to admit precautions, saying that it was in vain that they were used, and that this public calamity was not (I am using his own words) than a scourge of God, as a punishment for neglecting the old religious worship. He added that those who reveal that they were dying were already there * (/) Besides the ordinary prayers, there is use in Kulfie to deport with great pomp to the sick, images of faints, that everyone, one after the other, baise, preset, & so that they could not avoid their fort; that all precautions were their responsibility, and odious to the divinity, whose anger was to be appeased, by abandoning all human fours (*).'

(^) We could not find out where they had caught the contagion; perhaps they had, by neglecting the sentiniials, had some communication with the people in quarantine, or they had withdrawn from all earth, which these could have hidden before they had been locked up.

General Yeropkin, with a handle of men assembled in an infantry, reestablished public tranquility in a few days, and put the old foot back on track. The assistance of so many idle and sick men increased the contagion to the point that it would detract from it up to twelve hundred & beyond a day:

(^) "This populace in la chiénésîe wanted to avenge the evils which overwhelm it by those who work in its conservation... After having sacrificed a vidiine with strong blind rage, she resented the doctors & the surgeons. Some people from the dregs of the people wreck my maison, baking everything that is there found; they sought the other doctors, 6 surgeons, and chased those they could meet. Providence fauvatous us with their hands. I made: 'étois, fou'p qonnant' - do none of this, for four days, by order of the council, at the hotel des foundlings, to better ensure faith CONFEC marked ovation ^.'

28. Of Moscow, (+y).

Moscow, one of the largest cities in Europe, contains four enclosures one in the other; the smallest which occupies the center, called Kremmel, & the fertilized one which surrounds it, called Kitaya (or city Chinoise) make both surrounded by brick walls, & contain maisons similarly constructed: the third Bielogorod (or city white) heft fans walls, because they were Tenverfés; & the fourth finally, Zemlanoigorod (so called Zemla land & Gorod city) is equipped outside a sofie furnished with a parapet of earth: in these last two most of the maisons are made of wood. These houses are not contiguous, but a little distant from each other, & each of them is usually only inhabited by a family leaf; then they only have one or two floors at most, including the heated floor. The nobles have many domestic. The people live in large numbers and cramped in small wooden maisons.

In winter, the nobles fled faith from all parts of the Empire in this capital, bringing with them a large number of items. Many of the common people, who in the summer are engaged in rustic work, return to town in winter, to earn their living there in various trades. This concourse in the history of the male population fills the city so much from the month of December until March, that the population in this area goes, felony a few, to two hundred and fifty thousand men, &, felon of others, three hundred thousand. In March, we gradually start to return to the countryside, so that throughout the summer, the number of inhabitants is a quarter less than in winter. In 1771, the fear of the little one had made them flee much more; strong that I do not believe that in the month of August, there were more than one hundred and fifty thousand men in town. We can form an idea of the violence of this disease, and of the venom of my venom, by representing that of these hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, he removed twelve hundred a day. The death toll stayed there for a few days, fled he defensed to a thousand. The populace having during the revival reestablished all the ecclesiastical ceremonies in use at their place for the nursery of the dead, almost all the priests, deacons and other miniators of the altars then perished from the priest.'

29. As Moscow (n).

This same populace brought back to its duty - by feverishness, & become more treatable on seeing an increase in public calamity, such threatened to implore our lesson. Monasteries and other small hospitals were full, and contagion was widespread everywhere; "ain faith nation" (netbrose) no more sick to go there; moreover, the town itself was full of pestiferous people, that one could call it a large hospital. We were therefore content to exhort everyone to beware of faith, swearing all people foolish not to touch, as possible, any patient with bare hands; to burn the clothes & all that had fervent to the attacked people of the shovel; & maintain free & clean air in the rooms .

Count Grégoire Orlow (formerly Prince of the Holy Roman Empire) then arrived at Moscow, armed with full power from the Empress. I received order (C? Î), as well as the Order to Doctor Mertens.

* {n) I was given on September 30 the fleeting writing from M-General Yeropkin:

U-I attach here copies of the articles to the doctors and surgeons, which I have just received from S.E. f.-C.M. le Comte Grégoire d'Orlow, Grand-Master of Art. DisTillery of His Imperial Majesty, General Aide-de-camp w & Knight of several orders. Like other doctors, give my house aside in writing; it was enjoined on each one of us, to infiltrate mainly as what we would believe necessary to destroy the contagion. Having strengthened public tranquility, he w His Excellency orders that each physician, & "each surgeon, responds to the said articles, I send them to you for this purpose, & so that " you will keep your responses away from me. »Time, so that I can prefer them to HE.

Signed: » Pierre Yero PKIN. » Moscow on: [September 30, Ijyi.]

"The prefect traduéccion was made at Chance: l-" ^.( +5 lerie of the legation of Ruffie in Vienna, & faith finds «in all conformity with the true faith lands of the original. What I achieve by my refinement. In Vienna on December 30, 1775). - Grégoire DE Po LE tira, Conveiller de legation de RulTie, (5)

QUESTIONS:

The doctors and surgeons must answer * * the fleeting questions, each 35 "flagantry felon" to his own experiences:

I®. In what way does contagion, which is causing such devastation here * 3, spread itself properly?

2®. What do the symptoms make known that a patient is infected with this disease? In what way does it affect other ordinary fevers wind from Moscow? 31

3®. How the people, who continuously do 33 near the sick, can they know the disease to take the precautions not to be infected; & finally, how can the doctor be 33 when it is this disease that he is only so that we can at least bring all the painful fears to flee the patient?

4®. What do the remedies that have been used 33 until preferably in different cases, with what 33 gradation, in what tennis of the disease, & with of new hospitals for the poor attacked shovel?

5®. As the most general observations, it takes 33 determine the easiest way, but at the same time the 33 most fi-ir:c, to cure these unfortunates.“. What should the patient observe, taking remedies, & fans of them, & what is the best diet to facilitate healing?

6®. Finally, everyone must declare according to the lights, 33 what are the means, which he believes to be the best 33 & the safest, both to faith preserve this terrible damage, as to suppress it, &, if est possible, to uproot it entirely; but these means must be easy and easy to carry out?"

NOTE:Choke in these writings he found better, & made the best arrangements for both the treatment of patients, for the conservation of well-importance. He had putrid put up again, and what does she have in common with them? "How can the patient himself perceive that he has been attacked by this terrible evil, so that from the beginning he can ask for help?

It had already been a few months since the shovel had been carried in many villages, were gold line successes administered? "Tis en fuit-c." 33 Each of you must describe exadly the 39 symptoms of this disease by order & by degrees, 33 then mark in what way they are fused 93 to each other, which do name the accidents 3 * * dens that arrived at each change , & which 33 do those who are more or less dangerous: finally, in how many times, in what way, & with , 33 what marks does this contagious disease end? 33 whether by the recovery of the haunted, or by death.

The original, which is Comte G. Orlov-(c): The prefect traduéccion was made in channel-33 lerie of the legation of RulTie in Vienna, & faith finds 33 in all conforms to the true faith lens of the original. This 33 that I harness by my figure. In Vienna this: (23 Dec-3 Siempre l775).

Signed: 33 Grégoire DE Poletika, [33 Rullie Legation Conveiller].

RESPONSE:

■ Now so much Moscow. 33 both veins and distant from the capital; of people who were wild beasts: Moscow, had the goldline made to Kalomna, Yaroflaw & Tula. They sent infanté leurs de fanté, with doctors and surgeons, to the aid of these towns and villages.

2®. That the connoisseur of the peste was sometimes difficult at first, but that in the end it had caradériftic marks, which distinguished it from other diseases; I detail here all that will be found in the fruitful chapter of this treatise, touching on the diagnosis, to which I refer so as not to repeat myself.

3®. All that we will find 'below (Chapter III) about the prognostic, and about your uncertainty in general in the peste; when we can operate with some degree of probability the patient's recovery; & how dangerous the danger was until the fourth day, some good ones besides the symptoms.

4®. That the effects of the remedies had been extended to:

C.A fate court was formed, made up of General Yeropkin, as President, of a few Conveillers, three doctors & a surgeon. This confel receiving daily reports from doctors and officers reduced to very little, the harm being too violent to give the best-indicated medicines the time to act; that cinchona, acid-minerals, taken internally with large doses, were, in my opinion, which should make the base of the treatment. I add details of the other remedies, both internal and external, that will be found in Chapter 111 of this treaty.

5®. Besides that in the convalescence, wine, beer, kuas (small Rufle beer), light foods from the vegetable kingdom, and all the good air, were necessary.

6®. Qiie in the state was, where the shovel was very widespread, it was difficult to determine a particular method to bake, to stop its progress, & to uproot it entirely: that all that could decrease the communication of the patients, of their effects, & of the infected imperfonnes with the bees, tendroit to fill this object (see below Chapter IV, article, pestle dwul-gucc) \ which I hope that the jelly not only would weaken the contagion, but even that it would do much to destroy it.

Note: Observe de Mofcoüi 3 Jiers de police, & everything concerning public health was from Ibn report. Two doctors MM. Pogaretzky & Meltzer, then promised to reward them with a thousand rubles, charged each with destroying a hospital of loss, and went there.

REMARKS:

I observé the first jelly the ibn d'Oéîo-bre; from that day the disease became a little less cruel, and the pertilential miasma more fixed. The number of sick and dead diminished invariably, and the course of the disease, which, a short time before, had been one, two, or three days, increased to five and fixed. There are no longer so many large tenticular pestechiae and other spots, nor so many coals; it was buboes that the eye found in almost all patients.

The great cold that reigned (p) during the last two months of the year, annoyed the violence of the disturbing miasma that those who afflicted the patients & buried them dead, were less easily caught from this contagion, and were more repercussions of it .

36. The slow pestle hilfjob. ^ (e;).

(j ») Réaumur's thermometer marked in the morning between seventy and twenty-two degrees of freezing. & that many of the pestistere even were only slightly ill, & walked though having buboes. The end of the year i / yi ended, thanks to heaven, this cruel plague, both in Moscow and throughout the Ruffie Empire. Besides the three cities named below, there had been more than four hundred infested villages.

The dye was very cold throughout the winter. In order to destroy all the germs of the potential leaven, the doors and windows of the rooms where there had been pestiferous were bricked; & these places were perfumed with the anti-petrifying fumigant powder (^); the old wooden houses were completely demolished. Traces of the shovel were encountered throughout the city. We discovered even in February 1772, more than four hundred dead bodies which, the previous year, had been buried in the maisons. There is a virtue ü effective in destroying contagion in the cold, that none of those who unearthed these bodies, and led them to public cemeteries, fell from it sick (r).

(q) See below Chap. IV.

(r) Mr. Dodcur Poparetzky which Des'troit loaded "^! of Moscow.

The total number of deaths from the plague Montoit, fuivant reports to the senate & 'conifeil of faiité to beyond foixaiite & ten thousand men; one counts more than twenty- two thousand during the month of September feul' (v). If we add those who were buried by individuals & in secret (t), the total will easily rise to eighty in the month of Octobre, of the hay of the pestistérés at the Laferte hospital, told me some time after, that the carriers of the dead wore sheep skins, who had been fervent to pestiferees, after they had been expelled in the cold in December for two times twenty-four hours; & that none of them took the pest.

(s) This calculation is not entirely fair: there must have been as many as twenty-sixty thousand deaths in the month of September; first, since at the beginning of this month, he died ten hundred men a day, fled eight hundred; then a thousand, and finally up to twelve hundred following the reports of each day. But it should be noted that the number of dead could not be recorded during the revolt, it is likely that this is where this error comes from in the civil war.

(f) The number of these was not small; for in the fort of the pest, the men, the horses & the wagons intended to remove the corpses, never fufii-mille, which will be necessary join that of the dead in more than four hundred villages, & in the three cities of Tula, Yaroüaw & Kalomna (zO: whence it flees that this shovel must have removed up to a hundred thousand men.

"On se fervit." First to take away & bury the corpses of people condemned to death or public works; and when these were wanting, the poor were hired to pay the poor : they were given to each: a gun, coat, gloves & a mask, made of oilcloth; I enjoined them never to touch a corpse with bare hands . They refuse to obey us, not paying them much. There were then some who refocused two or three days on nursery fans: parents, friends, or poor people hired for money, carried them away; all therefore could not be noted, as well as a number of others which were buried clandestinely, and of which no mention was made in reports to the sénat.

(u) These cities didn’t go through much , because their inhabitants, learned by example ■ April-happy of JV Iofco.u, first admire all the precautions. It wreaked more havoc in the villages, especially in those which were furthest from the capital, by 3 Iofcoîi. '_ 59.

Roaring, impossible that one could fall ill by the touch of dead bodies or clothing, they rather attribute the effects of contagion to an inevitable fatality. We lost several thousand of these people, who seldom find themselves well beyond a woman, I have learned from the infected cent-infants that most of them fell ill by the fourth day or the fifth day.

The loss, as usual, did not overwhelm that the common people: among the nobles & the somewhat affluent merchants, apart from a few who were the victims of their temerity and their negligence, it attacked -almost perfected. It communicated it unilaterally, only by the touching of the sick & the infidious choires; the atmosphere does not spread contagion in any way, & always connects very weak. When we bring alive some sick people, we (x) approach them al-Fez, so that there is only one foot of dirt between them & us; & fans take care of no other precaution than tinting neither their bodies nor their clothes, nî their beds, we remained safe from the pest. Looking at the patient's tongue, I used to hold a handkerchief soaked in vinegar before my mouth & nose.

NOTE:^ (a :) It is here only that doctors who like me, connected in town; but not at all from those who had loss hospitals to deal with.

40. Histoîre de la peste.

Among so many dead, I only anger three gentlemen who have been attacked by the mob, very few good bourgeois, and only three hundred foreigners from the lowest story; all the reste were from the little Ruffe people. The first did not buy, during all this time of calamity, that which was necessary for their nourishment: the others make use of all that had been fed into the flames, and which sold it at low prices; they refuse to burn the elves that they inherited, they even carry a quantity of clandestine snuff ; whatever we say and do, nothing has to.

He died of the little one, in the city two surgeons, and a number of surgeons in the hospitals. M. le Dodeur Pogaretzky, & M. Samoïlowitz, first surgeon of the Saint-Nicolas hospital, both had several folds, and were cured by them critical fumes, which they had at the beginning of the disease.

41. Letter from Moscow (ÿ).

The Imperial Maison of found children, which contained about a thousand children (^) & four hundred adults, both nurses & babysitters, masters & workers, was preserved from the skin by the precautions which I will describe below (sj); there were only four workmen and as many soldiers, who having crossed the hedges during the night, were attacked by them in three times; but by first holding them apart from the connects from there Maison, the evil never went any further. It’s thus that this whole maison linked faine, although all those around ravaged by the shovel. Thus, the atmosphere, well during the heat of summer, that during the cold weather (aa), in no way communicated the contagion;

(ÿ) Most of the smallest children were nurses in the countryside.

TREATISE ON THE PEST - CHAPTER II

"They fear us not, but issue forth their city.
Now put your shields before your hearts, and fight...
They do disdain us much beyond our thoughts,
Which makes me sweat with wrath."

(aa) It is astonishing that it should be towards the summer solstice, like the Al-Turent Ruffel, (in the natural history of Aleppo) & Prosper Alpinus (de medicina Ægyptionim) that usually celebrates the child in Africa & in Africa, while that in Europe it is when it is making its ravages, and that it is there subjugated by the cold of winter.

42. Peste bîfboîre.

It is propagated only by the contact of the sick and infested effects. The little one attacked the young and robust young people much more easily than the Tieillards and the weak; grumpy women & nannies were not immune to it. It seemed to me that children beyond the age of four took it more difficult, but that, once infected, they had the worst fibroids. Although in some people there was no marked fever; prefect all those however who were sick of the pest, had more or less fever. There were, in small numbers, the truth, which fell from the beginning, delirium in a plire—nerve accompanied by a violent fever. The majority were weak, and not faith pitied than anglo-flies & headaches.

This scoop of the shovel may appear too long to many people; but I am persuaded that it will make infinitely more eagerness to discover the nature of this evil, to become acquainted with the way it spreads, and to seek suitable curative and prefervative methods, according to the simple account of start, progress; according to the description of symptoms & other circumstances, that by all the meanings & distillertations found in large volumes written on this disease.

The doctor of the military hospital looked for a long time, how, & in what way the bastard had come there, and finally found that two soldats had died there in November 1770, shortly after their arrival from Choczim, where the bastard reigned so; & that a Colonel whom they had fled, had died on the way. The professor of anatomy perhaps differentiated the bodies of these two people; & in marked faith, it was the little one who took him away, it was from them that he had deprived him. It is true that the nurses were infected by foolishly touching these two soldats when they still lived, or else it was by the touching of their clothes and their caves; they spread the contagion among their families in flight .

CHAPTER II: Diagnosis or Knowledge of PLAGUE.

"By the fires of heaven, We'll leave the foe & make our wars on you: now the gates are ope."

t-44. Knowledge of the experience.

According to the contents of the preceding chapter and other scraps of pestes, it was certain that it was a very acute disease, most often accompanied by petechiae, buboes, coals, anthrax; with fever, unless it kills dead; strong contagious, & brought by contagion from Egypt, or other provinces of the Turkish Empire.

45. Awareness of the little one.

To be able to abolutely determine that a disease is the shovel, it must have all the symptoms that I have just described, in one or several patients who make it attacked. We have seen above that they all met from the beginning of the Moscow pestle, strong enough that they should have had no doubts about the nature of the evil. These same figures taken apart, do not join the pestle; for the rapidity of the course of this disease is common to many others: we find pestechiae, and even to take in the large, in ordinary putrid fevers; there are also others where we meet coals and carbuncles; buboes make a goldline faith produced by venereal disease & by le f-corbut; & sometimes even, although rarely, in putrid fevers the scab made by crazy abscesses the horns, but they then furrow later, & these fevers do not have the other symptoms which, joined to the buboes, constitute the scythe. The strong contagion, by which this evil communicates from one perfonne to another, must necessarily enter into the definition of the pest; because fans of such a contribution there is no peste. In a word, if he: "There is communication, either by trade, or in war, with the Turks or Egypt," & 'that some people, or many people, were attacked by a disease to which the definition which I have just given is entirely suitable, it is as long as it is the little one. In such cases, the doctors should not be too on their guard; the slightest mistake on their part can cause great damage.', If they give the name of peste to a disease which is not it, they do a great harm to trade & to public choke, they throw, sans raison, terror in all elephants; but faith, on the other hand, they do not recognize it when it exits in fits, or neglect to declare to the government that it is it, they prevent us from being opposed to its progress from the beginning, & by conséquent cause of the horrible calamity which overwhelms whole peoples.

We have seen in the preceding chapter, how easily the bastard, whom we recognized from the beginning, was smothered in the military hospital; & we can judge from this how proudly we could have, with the same precautions, put it out in the sheet factory, if we had declared it in the month of January when she started there. In this tins - there the pestilential venom, as numb and more fixed to the cause of the cold fall, spreads more slowly; but fled, excited and made more subtil by the heat of summer, it began in June the devastation, quickly disturbing, and killing in very few dyes.

This evil begins differently from the various constitutions of the people it attacks, and the faith in sons of the year: it sometimes pretends to be crazy for other people. 47 ladies (a'); but the souvent faiths first symptomes do, the headache, the abalburdi-(C-) as if you were drunk, the friz. in other words, depression and lack of strength, a small fever with shipwrecks and swells of a greater or lesser quantity of different materials; the patients then have red eyes, a trifle look, a white, full tongue. In this state they can sometimes for hours, even a day or two, stand and walk. They make itchy pains & pains where the buboes & coals are ready to appear. In the fort of the shovel many patients peril-T the fertile or the third day, before the tumors have to grow stronger, having only pestechiae or red spots, which walled up on the skin shortly before death, & some even fans spots (b). The buboes and the coals usually fortify the fertile or the third day, rarely the fourth. In some the shovel promises to be crazy for the appearance of an inflammatory disease, as indicated by the strong heat, the fois, the dark urine, the redness of the cheeks, the furious & phrenetic delirium; but in most of them it begins at the beginning in the form of a nervous fever: the heat is slight, the thirst likewise, the urine is raw and clear; they think they are only slightly ill, until a violent dejection, buboes, coals, pestechiae and vibices, wash their hair more to themselves & to those around them, no doubt about the danger they find themselves in. It happens, but rarely, that she takes the type of an intermittent fever. PREF- than any shovel wins, me/(u-) rent before fixth day; those who touch the septieme, have every reason to try to escape from it .

The bubo (c /) is a glandular tumor, sensible, more or less high & deep, which has its fief in the inguinal or sub-auxillary glands. In the peste this same name faith gives to other external glandular tumors in all parts of the body; there just is said that there are buboes cheeks, neck, & c. Their ordinary liège to the groins, is a little beyond the fold of the thigh; & sous les garilelles, some ribs lower than the bottom of their cavity. The bushes make the real scent of the bastard; this crisé to bring back the haunted, must be made perfect by the full maturity & suppuration of these tumors. It happens sometimes that a bubo arrives at the lofteureur of a noifette, or even of a nut, & that it disappears soon after; or that notwithstanding that it refects, it does not ignite, & remains illegible: in either case the patient is not trampled by it, & in the first, death is not distant. He für- sometimes comes suddenly large buboes, mosques fans inflammation, or remarkable pains, which tread so much, that the patients, who a little before appearing to be at the extremity, faith rise, eat, & Tecroyent infante'(-ÿ) but little hours later they die subitenient. When, therefore, the buboes cross infertibly, when they appear red, painful, tending to suppuration, and when the other symptoms of the disease become less, there is reason to expect perfect crucification. Ordinarily there is only one seu bubo à une grine or fous a same aiffelle; sometimes a bubo is encountered on each groin, more short often with two aiffelles, but more frequently with one groin & one aifl-felle in the same shade.

"(if) The elders, says Van Swietén, faith name in "Greek bubones & we give the same name to the tumors of these glands". The glandular tumors "fituated in other parts of the body" were also called "buboes." However, the use wanted to "flee that we refer this name to the crazy tumors" the aiffelles & groins; See: How, in "Aphorisms." Boerhav. ad § 1448, Tom. V, pag. 437 ^ & § 416, Tom. I, pag. 727, & fuiv.

50. The Parotids.

The parotids sometimes accompany the pest, & can then be compared to buboes; but they do not make a crisis goldline faith more complete than the buboes of the groins or the armpits.

(II.i) Knowledge of your pestle.

51. Charcoal Anthrax.

The charcoal has a gangrenous spot on the skin, resembling a burn, from which this name may have come to it; it glows in a reddening spread with little pale velvets, livid or black, surrounded by a fiery circle; this redness soon degenerates into a black & hard crust (û). The name of anthrax, which defines in Greek the same choke as carbo in Latin ^ efl: ordinarily given to an evil resemblable with coal, but more confidable & higher than him; it penetrates further into the giraffle, and is surrounded by inflamed and painful flesh.

We find the coals at the neck, at the cheeks, at the chest, at the back and at the extremities; sometimes even the buboes; we REN- against anthrax commonly the neck & back. The coal begins with a small point, from which it extends as from a center; he has one or several small veflies, which, in faith breaking, l'ailefent flow from sanie; & the skin livid in deiïbiis faith gangrené. When the patient lacks strength, the coal does not rise; but if it still connects it to it, the vivid parts ignite, it appears around the scar a red circle, which goes into suppuration, and thus begins to detach the dead part from the living: while this suppuration continues crazy the gangrenous part towards the in the background, the scarlet detached on all sides, drops & leaves an ulcer. The coals sometimes appear as fans that there are buboes, so they accompany them, and then commonly appear later.

Pestechiae are similar to those we see in putrid fevers, or much larger; sometimes they are even the diameter of a lens, purple, livid or black in color. It still happens that the variegated skin of an infinite number of small dots and livid or black vibices, which make it appear as if it had been whipped. All these spots are very bad, and the latter announce an imminent death.

53. The pulse.

As for the pulse in this disease, I do not know the scent.

Then say nothing from my own experience. Moscow's foot having been so contagious that we were infected with it, the tender affection of the sick, we refrained from feeling the pulse. Doctors & surgeons in hospitals are fumbling around with gloves on; others fervent on tobacco leaves, which they previously put on the patient's wrist. I'm talking about the reports they sent to the medicine counter, that the pulse differed greatly in different patients, that it was very uncomfortable in the same man, sometimes frequent, hard, strong; sometimes slow, soft, small; but the most weak and more or less frequent. If our own conservation (/) had not led us to avoid a certain danger by refraining from feeling the pulse of the sick, we should have done so out of consideration for the other citizens, whom, fans of this precaution, we would have infected by bringing them contagion. The doctors accustomed to obfervation of ma-ladies, might in some strong judging by analogy of the degree of heat & the force of circulation, by examining the color of the brightening, the dispofition of the whole body, the respiration, the state of the tongue & of the mouth, the foif, the urine & all other circumstances. It must not, however, be believed, that I want to conclude from this, that it is useless and impossible to feel the pulse in this disease.

* (f) I still talking about me & the other metals decisions, who having no peste hospitals, were hiding in town & fleeing our practice of the occulted sense.

The diversity of symptoms has given rise to the opinion that there are three types of shovels: the pestechial shovel, that accompanied by char-good, & the one with buboes. The story which I have just given, sufficiently demonstrates that it is a leaf and the same disease, which, for various circumferences, and in fine colors, is more or less violent. We often find pestechiae, buboes & coals at the same time in the same patient; or else they succeed each other. In the month of July the great number of pellifera died before the eruption of the tumors, with pestechial leaves; in August & in September, we find these examination themes joined to buboes & to coals at almost all; since the middle of this disease, which has become less cruel, has produced were still pestechiae and coals, but they were no longer clever niji, nor faith fréqueiis.

Before this last period, under a hundred patients, there barely survived four; while during the last months of the year it heals much more. Sydenham observed the same choke in the London Paw (^); In the first months, he said, that the little ruler reigned, 53, preferring infested people every day to subitously move in public places, 33 fans realizing in advance no harm; 33 while when the little one lasted some time, she no longer killed personne, 33 unless the yellow fever & the other symptoms 33 were preceded: whence it flees that this 33 evil was more cruel, & more vivid in my beginning 33 than in the flight (ù), whatever 33 First, he took less than 33, that when his influence on human bodies 33 increased 35. Nature seeks to deliver harm from buboes. The coals and the pestechiae are simply symptoms which denote the putrid solution of moods, & a very great acrimony; from where he fled, that the more we meet.

(c) Sydenham Seéi. IV, Cap. III. (/ i) It should be noted that it started in summer.

56. Childhood childhood.

First, and the less of these, the lighter the pestle-c.

57. The Prognostic Wind.

It is impossible to distort a certain prognosis as each patient in particular. "In fact," says Chenot, "this disease, which is a true Proteus, takes in a few different times, prefers new phenomena, offers scenes that vary singularly by their origin, their connections, 33 their progress & their leaks, not only 33 in many, but in a sick and even 33 sick person. In it a slight attack 33 precedes an unexpected sequence of ailments; 33 in this one a violent faith couffe closes ends up happily: another escapes against all hope, when the force of the evil disease 33 condemns him to die. You see one perish, who barely thinks he is sick, and others walk like people 33 in good health, who die a few hours after 33 (f).

A good suppuration of the buboes, & the repair of the smut of the coals, joined to the decrease in other symptonia, give a good prognostic.

All this makes it clear what difference there is from the putrid & malignant fevers, which some authors have called pestilential (/ î :), except for their delusional effects; & how different they are. These putrid fevers usually have a much slower course; they never have all the symptoms that accompany the bitch, & do not ignore deadly; when they become contagious, it is only to a handsome one.

{k) Chenot (ie Pejie ^ pag. 52, says: "I conflict therefore that we give to epidemic diseases, 35 which by contagion, the violence of their symptômes, & some irregularities, seem to approach 35 the peste, a name after some predominant symptome 33, preferably to give them wrong 33 about that of peste, source of errors for the fans, & of fright for the people's- "Savages in Far Topology", (Tom. I, pag. 414), it is expressed as follows: 33 'The peste differs from pestilential diseases, in that it 33 constitutes a unique & defined kind of disease; & that there are as many pestilential diseases, 33 as there are malignant & epidemics, which carry 33 more people than it survives.' 33."

55. Connoissance de la pestîc.

Blow lesser degree that they harm.

(II.ii) Power to propagate.

68. How the pestie faith commmunicates.

The arguments that I am going to produce, put me beyond doubt, that the pestlilential venom brought among us, is propagated there by the touching of the sick & infected effects, or of a closed air & charged with contagious particles, & not at all by the open air of the atmosphere. Personne is not immune to epidemic ailments, whose cauffes make in the atmosphere, they make inevitable. In the shovel those who refrain from any communication with the sick, both immediate, and by various substances which contain the venom, connect it free, although they live in a country or in a city ​​where it wreaks havoc; while the poor, forced to earn a living by work, and less worried about their comfort, not avoiding the trade of the sick, covering themselves with clothes that they buy at a low price, or that they inherit, & ainfi continually exposed to contagion, are mainly attacked by this disease. If the shovel of the shovel was in the atmosphere, or was carried there and there in its state of adivity, it would flee.

69. Knowledge of the Pie.

Unlike what happens, that all the inhabitants of the same country, at least of the same place, whatever condition they may have, should be attacked indifferently, as one infers in many epidemic diseases. The sheet that we puffé puzzlé, as for the peste, attribute to the atmosphere, and that faiths of different temperatures can more or less dispose of our bodies to receive the contribution, that they can increase the violence of the miasma, they may dull or destroy it. This was already known to Sydenham, when he wrote: "and I do however realize that the diffusion of the atmosphere, however favorable it may be, cannot produce it; but that the bastard, always some- ”That existant part, is brought from places “infidelés in others by effects or the arrival ”of some pestiférés, & that it does not spread there for then only in favor of a "Favorable air disposition" (/). The opinion Van Swieten e-fl line with our experience (î): "Those, he said, that the first 5 author that the Europeans thus confined enclose the doormouse with their reclining veils 55 like them, from below the terrals of their 53 maisons, & even through the windows. It therefore seems 53 that it can be concluded from this that the covenant of the peste does not exile in the air, 33 since these inhabitants of an infected city j 33 although locked up, breathe the same air as 33 other citizens, & that their bodies make 33 surrounded by impure air, fans however that they 33 are infected with it. But it is to be noticed 33 that these convergences faith roar at the top of the maisons, (g) that thus the contagion that exhales the pestiferous bodies, and is 33 scattered throughout the atmosphere, &, for 33 ainfi to say, divided in the lower part of the air, & thereby become incapable of doing harm. We make the strongest poisons * 33 diluted in a large amount of water, [(ip) "Lobb Of the pLague," pag. 45].

News that the shovel is in the veil, people have changed their homes, & have lived far 35 from the contagion, make them, as we do, 33 bound far gold magnetism, But observations learn 33 goldline faith, that those who make them shut up 33 in their maisons, cut off from all trade with men, have not had the shovel. 33 We find in several authors 33 femable cases (“) of people who, having been concerned 33 to get their first supply of life-threatening chokes, 33 fled closed their maisons, so that during all le temps 33 that the shovel reigned, we did not hear part of them. The public calamity over, we found that there had been no death in their families. When in 1718 & 1719, 33 the shovel wreaked such havoc on Aleppo, that in fixing 33 months of dyes it destroyed eighty 33 Thousand men, the Anglo-if families, who 33 had shut themselves up in their maisons, found 33 foolish. Colleges inhabited by students, and convents, 33 most of this scourge preferred in the same way. 33 In other words, too, when the shovel reigns in Aleppo, the Europeans link it to the Hospitallers at »the shelter, while keeping them confined in their 35 maisons, & fans having no trade 33 with the others; while the homestands, 33 believing in principle of their religion to fatality, do not want to admit -33 no precaution, & perils sent in large numbers. However, the most cautious of them, foolish pretext of a faint pilgrimage to the tomb of Muhammad, faith fitter herefore for the danger of contagion. Some faith in the trinity ^ 3 figure deities that the Europeans, by a 33 peculiar difference, were less sujects at the time; but certain observations have shown that the natives of these countries, when they link up locked up with the Europeans, enjoy the same advantages as them; 33 & that on the other hand, when these neglect this precaution, or put it 33 too late in use, or else par oil-f 33 public before the peste cleft, they [(?) Fountain 3] are infected infrequently although the others (o). It is however true that we read in the same:

(-7) "They could have walked in the streets and public places with impunity, and even entered the maisons where there were pestiferous, provided that they had not touched the sick or the chosen inaffectéds: I am convinced by my own experience, albeit that of that of others."

(n) He quotes here Lobb: "Of the plague" ^ pag. 45, Zfc. (O) He quotes Ruflel: "The natural history of Aleppo", (pag. 250 - 262), for the precautions which are practiced successfully, in order to protect the child from harm.

73. Knowledge of h-peste.

(w) can no longer harm. It therefore seems that 55 the venom of the shovel is very dangerous in the places where it is collected in quantity, and much less in those where it is diluted and scattered. Amount of experience confirms this opinion, & c. 33 Cleft as well as this great man, gifted with a genius the upper one, drawing on the observations of others, draws conclusions, by which he demonstrates that one should never look at the qualities of the atmosphere as spades of shovel, and that the air does not carry the contagion far away. It seems to me that what I have already said, and which I will confirm below with new examples, makes the truth of this slander clearer than the day. The same observations confirm that the open air never becomes contagious, even in the winding of places where several corpses of men who have died from the shovel, connect the fans with culture, and there rotten; but that the pair contained and charged with a quantity of expulsations the exiles which force the bodies of many sick people entalfeld in the same room, can infidel the foolish people who enter there; & that in the end these same exhalations lose their harmful qualities, as soon as, by free communication with the sphere, they are there make dispersées & divirtées. We have seen that the cold of winter has touched, & as if the venom of the shovel were frozen; that the heat of summer, on the contrary, made it more violent & more volatile; & that, however, the atmosphere is linked to it foolishly in summer than in winter.

(64). Comparaison of the pestie with the smallpox.

There is no disease to which the shovel can compare better than that of smallpox. Both are caught by contagion; their attack both was accompanied by headache & vomiting; fever usually higher in smallpox than in shovel; then flee the tumors which make each of them specific; in one i of the swarms of a determined & particular form; in the other buboes: then the other symptoms diminish, &, if it makes a good suppuration, the patients relapse from these two diseases.

Besides that there is in the shovel, as in smallpox, symptomatic eruptions; we find in the small pox pestechiae & sometimes coals; but they are much more common in the shovel. It sometimes happens, that gleams heal from the double hash of the asterisk in the screening topology.

75. Connoissancê dè la pestle-(i).

Of the patients of the shovel before the appearance of tumors and in-country examination themes; Likewise there is a smallpox fever [in smallpox (r)]. The venom of small pox, although preferable, is in some cases fixed and inactive, to the point of attacking only those who have immediate communication with the sick; while in other thei'is, & other dispositions from the air-(i) become more volatile & more air-(y), it easily spreads far away through the subdivided diversions which contain it; This is what the smallpox has in common with the shovel (.O.-). Out of a thousand men there are one or two who never take the smallpox, even when they live with people who have it; I have at least seen a few people who have never been attacked by the chick, although continually expelled to the contagion. A German woman, mother of a tailor, worked up her son, raw, and pretended to their children, all of whom, with fervor, had the shovel, and died; she hushed over stain, and continued to do well. An old woman Rulfe lived in a room with two other women & eight children; she was on the water, with a fixed month old child, sürvive to all the others, whom the shovel removed; these cadavers revièrent in mail box religion two whole days before we the inhumât, she had embrassés feveral for which there is no precaution for faith fans, she had served the sick; despite this she did not have the shovel. Likewise, the wife of the master reamer, of whom I will speak below (t), who left by husband, and another patient lying in the same room, during all of their diseases, healthy link. Such examples are, however, very rare; & perhaps a tiny man among a thousand has this prerogative.

+ î ( .. r) Sydenham, [II, III], discourse:

* (s) for fear of bad understood, I have m'E ^ att'plique I mean that there are Tinto, where the material ^ empestées, like those which contain the varicose venom, does not quickly infect those who touch them; - while in other circumstances a slight affection it is enough to be infected; What- that the danger be always very great, even when one or the other miasme seems aêlivité of fans. There was; for example, a lot of affects encased in the town of Moscow in December 1771; but the miasma having lost strength, few people were attacked;

(t) CHAPTER III. Connoissance de la pèstîe.

"Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death,
Vagabond exile, raying, pent to linger
But with a grain a day, I would not buy
Their mercy at the price of one fair word;"

The small pox is with us (u) much less destituétive than the peste; most survive; & those who have had it once never take it back with their lives. It has been continuously among us, since it was brought to us from Afia by the Arabs, in the fiftieth century (x).* In this it does not look like the peste-j which kills all those it attacks; which returns several times in the same individual; & finally, which, once extinct, does not reappear in Europe, unless:

(w) The smallpox causes as much havoc among the Kalmoucs as the shovel with us; hence their custom, that when someone among them is attacked by this disease, they raise their camp, and flee far away, feeding the sick with as much humor and water as 'he needs it for a few days'.

(v) Prefer all the common people have small pox in their childhood, because they make expelled fans no precaution to contagion; while the children of adults, when smallpox is epidemic, have no communication with others.* This is how we can explain, why many Princes, before the inoculation was admired in the courts, died of smallpox in an old man already advanced: because they kept away from it, until it is that by some hazard the contagion penetrates until them * that it was not there again brought again from elsewhere.

So therefore the inoculation, which gives small light erola, by which, so that by the small natural smallpox, one is preserved for the whole life of the return of this disease, is not suitable as for the peste: because it is proven by experience, that it can attack the same man several times, not only in different periods of life, but also in the same epidemic (y').

* (y) M. Orreus in "Faith description de la peste", printed in Hétersbourg in 1784, in-4®, pag. 159, says, that during the peste of Moscow some doctors proposed to try to inoculate him; but that this idea was rejected because '■+ l®. as much by the writings as 55, as by the observations made to Yalfy & 55 at Moscow, it was certain that this evil, different in this respect from the little pox which never returned, attacked in certain circumstances several times +3 same individual.' 2®. Qiie: "this evil is not inevitable" 33 ble, & in the hope that it would soon happen, this operation, terrible by itself, would be useless & ridiculous. 3®. That it seems hard & even inhuman to force people of the common people, & who fired. 33 would be able to refute exempt, or even 33 prisoners sentenced to death, to paffer it with ft +3 little hope of success, by an experience that I know of the pestîe. [69]

The times of astrology & prefixes being to baffle, to make room for lazy philosophy & the study of nature, I would be ashamed to stop at tales & fables, which are found in many writings on the shovel; & it seems to me useless to refute the predictions of the little one, make the appearance of comets, as the games of the children when they represent burials, and conglomerate tumbles (25). The populace can imagine & believe things that are lacking in good sense; but it is astonishing that they have never been adopted & written by doctors. There would be more likelihood in what is reported, that the birds leave the places where the. little reign; although I can say that this is very false. During the whole year, where the little ruler reigned in Moscow, we did not see fewer birds flying than usual; & these- the ones we kept in the mai foilis, locked up in cages, were not any worse there as long as we were careful to feed them; but one would each refute to refute from his own 55 movement, except for the danger which accompanies it...

+ (^ z) Diemerbroek wrote:

"The Pest can easily appear to be that in such a tumult, one generally had little distance from them; strong that there were many who died of hunger & thirst. This is where the dreams of other authors come from, who pretend to see clouds (aa) swimming in the air, which infiltrate the maisons as when they fell; or flaming or blue globes (bb), which bring the barb. In July & August the sky was clear in Aloscou, fled it was covered fouvcnt, & never personne saw nothing femable bled. Besides, this is too far removed from all true truth, for anyone to be able to add less faith to it than this bit. The spirit of men struck with fright, is inclined to imagine fables & to look for the extraordinary or the marvelous coughs in cafes & the effects of the great calamities; neglecting to observe the natural course of chokes (cc), loss is only the highest degree of putrid fevers; that it is not an essential disease by itself; that is in the air, like that of other epidemic diseases; & that it was born in our climates, fans be brought to it by the way: but this doctrine faith oppines so much of the darkness of the Middle Ages, it is not very in keeping with the philosophic spirit & observer of the eighteenth century, which I do not think I should stop fighting, & to prove by repetitions, what the experience of most of Europe, for more than a century, shows. Besides, one must only pay attention to the effect of quarantines; how they stop the progress of loss, blocking its way; & read the observations of those who saw this plague, to be convinced that it was brought to us from Egypt, or by the Turks; & that it is about the touching touch of the sick or infected chokes, that this evil is communicated and propagated. The facts I am reporting in this treatise appear to me to have put this truth in such a day, that it would be refuted to the evidence that to doubt it."

NOTE:*(, cc) It is in this chapter that I should have refuted the opinion of those who believe that the knowledge of the pestle.

(III.iii) Treatment of the child.

ONE has not yet found against the child any specific remedy, which, by a particular virtue, can make the pestilential miasma incapable of harming, or destroy when it has already entered the human body; What is more, and we have not known until this day any certain method or treatment which cures many of those who attack it. In the beginning & during the fury of shovel, the violence of the fürpal miasma infinite the force of all remedies, & prefect all those who attack it die, whether they use it or not, Torque of the shovel well become less violent, several personnes heal fans, fans of the four hours departure. Hence it is that authors, moreover worthy of belief, advocate different remedies for the cure of the shovel; & that they claim to have cured by many means of this disease. What heap of mediacamens are not found in most floemographers? Which formulas do not contain their main ■ "75 verses and views"? Recipes, in which the mixture of remedies contrary to each other, sans order fans method, prove that their authors have given no real indication to truth or meaning. As long as we don't have a specific remedy for the shovel, it will link us to no other resource than to do research on the nature of the disease, which the film-producing miasma results: "to observe the effects, which flee; the efforts which nature employs; the ways by which it is used to free itself from evil; & finally the symptoms which announce a good or bad witch;' this known, it will be necessary to faith to guide it ^ by analogie, & make use of the means that experience has hindered us to rehabilitate in maladies, whose species most closely resembles a shovel; it will be necessary for the 55-(i) to help nature in its efforts, and to remove the obstacles which oppose it. We see by the screech of the shovel, that those who are attacked by this disease, smell nervous affections before the fever is parrified, and that it is most putrid; that it is accompanied by symptoms which make it specific, and which dill it from other fevers, It has also proven that there are few marked people in which she seems crazy in the form of a fever inflammatory, and that when this happens it is only at the beginning of the disease, when the agonizing venom rages in nerves in very overwhelming ways, causes this kind of fever before it has brought corruption in moods; which must happen soon after. It is thus that of an inflammatory disease, one suddenly falls into the most putrid of states.

From all this, I find a double chain of symptoms in the barb; the first depend on the irritation of the nerves by venom, which thus disturbs the animal economy; the others come from the effects of the same venom 'as the innner essence of the fang', that is to say, of the putrid solution & of a particular acrimony, analogous to the nature of sourdough. I name the first period nervous state, & the putrid fertile.

A. The nervous state.

In this state, the miasme is sometimes heated by the body by the fumes: it has no need for coelescion, since it is futil-b & volatile, and that in this way it easily grazes through the pores, through which it is heated with fluids lighter. We must come to the recourse of nature with remedies that cause slight transpiration, like lukewarm boiffons, egrets, tea-shaped infusions with lemon juice or vinegar, camphorated emulsions, camphorated julep with vinegar & niuf-c: the latter are all the more effective in transfusion, as they soothe disorders nerves. If ever the faith in feignage can take place in the punt, it is in this state, when these first nervous agitations produce violent inflammatory fomatory-atoms in a very pleoric people. This is why we must help the patient in the nervous state; but it is rare for doctors to find the opportunity to do so; because, or miasme, violently attacking nerves, kills like a thunderbolt; or While it only excites mild disturbances at the beginning, most of them refute all pretenses, faith believing they are hardly sick; or finally this nervous state is of too short duration, as has happened in our peste since July until the end of Octobre, when the most soulvent, a few hours after the invitation of Amal, the state putrid was already beginning.

(III.iv) Treatment of pestîe.

B. Putrid vetat.

When the pestilential miasma begins to diffuse the mass of the fang, and to communicate to it its acrimony, I have no doubt that the cinchona & the mineral acids: It is effectively rotten in ordinary putrid fevers, but is then of great help. Although a small number of those to whom these remedies were administered, were recaptured, the experience, however, in no way seems contrary to this sniffing, made by analogy. The effects of cinchona and mineral acids are slow, and these remedies must have been taken in large quantities for several days in putrid fevers, before they can stop the rot of moods which begins: the shovel prevails much für these fevers by the speed of their course, which threatens a very prompt ruin, & by the violence of symptomas. These remedies therefore lack only the degree of strength in their qualities, proportioned to the violence and the rapidity of the evil. In addition to the difficulties wrought by evil itself, there are many which depend; only one thousand beliefs, which are preferred at times as a patient, and which prevent the doctors from making good observations, and from following a method in the treatment. Most of the time they are called too late in the sick, who try to hide their condition, so as not to be forcibly separated from their parents. Trials, of their friends, & transported to hospitals: the people defuse all the decourse of art, having much more confidence in the home remedies convèillees by the old women; all the more so when he sees that he dies just as much from those whom the doctors treat. In hospitals full of patients, the impure & contagious air, the inhalation of foul vapors, the violence with which one was transported there, fear, the trifle, the lack of most of the chokes born - "celtic legionaires" to so many sick patients; the hardness of the nurses and guards, increased by the continual aspect of so many great evils, the little attention paid to each individual, the uniform treatment used for all, changes these places of mercy & charity into heaps of horrors & calamities, in a state of pain & defecation; & make temples of the haunted, lairs of death; strong as I flee still für pure that four hundred sick there is restored a sheet. Let us read all the treatises of the shovel, we will find that tremble evils accompanied it everywhere . Who will expect good observations made in shovel hospitals? How will we be able to demand treatments there? even from the most favored doctors, (Employing the best remedies? It is therefore very difficult (R very rare to have good observations on the effects of the Sc methods of the remedies used, when the shovel devastates densely populated cities. Before we can look for resources in our art, the civil administration, and that of public health, must be managed in such a way as to supply the citizens, fans that turn so much to the detriment of patients.

As in the beginning of the shovel Moscow, all who were attacked were dragged into hospitals, I had, like the other doctors in the city, very rarely the opportunity to try the effects of the medicines indicated: later, when the whole city was infested (R resembled a hospital, I took the liberty of giving those that I would find docile, first an emetic, then quinquina & mineral acids in large quantities, but the shovel had then reached such a degree of malignancy, that almost all died unexpectedly from the first or the fertile day, before we can administer these remedies. In September, a woman of twenty-four years has a headache with fever & vomiting, he gets angry soon after a bubo in the right groin, & another crazy the garlic on the same side, of the grolfeur of a noifette; the next day small pestechiae appeared all over the body; she was weak, and as if dizzy, with a white, moist tongue; the urine was pale; she complained most of all of headaches and anxiety. After I had made him vomit with twenty grains of root of ipecacuana, I made him take a very strong decoelion of cinchona, under two pounds of which I had mixed a half and a half extract of the same bark, and a fat acid vitriol elixir from the dispensatoire in London, with an ounce of althea sirop: she took three ounces of this remedy every two hours, and besides that, another four times a day, half a big quinquina powder. She had for ordinary boiffon a decodion of barley, tart.

So Treatment of the bitch with vitriol spirit. The buboes grew indefatigably, to the point that in the space of a few days they were as large as a walnut; in this state they returned to the fans no mark of suppuration. The patient began to recover inexorably; & at the end of a female she was preferred fully recovered: then she died, despite me, at the hospital, from where she grew up soon after ^ & came to see me, enjoying a perfect sante;

We seldom had occasion, by the reasons detailed below, to deal with these illnesses; I am, however, perfused that such a method could have saved many of those whose death was weak and slow from death. The cases of three children, one of whom was one year old, and the other two still younger, confirm that I have just advanced; all three had a pestilential bubo in the groin with a fever & a great faith. Having made them take a cinchona decoetion with my extract, they found it better; the buboes ripened & came in good suppuration. - Two of these children faith recovered; the third was removed, in the convalescent period, - by convultions from the dentition. Whatever happened in December's marked breed, where the evil becomes lighter, laif-Toit escapes many people, this observation can however fervent to confirm the effectiveness of the remedy, puif-que children always make more strongly faith fits of the shovel than adults, (fl) & that it had the same false effects shut up in three who were sick at the same time.

One can, corrects I have already said, to heal the healer of the shovel by mineral acids and cinchona, only when it is to a lesser degree; I do that these remedies have been given to many people, that not only have they not healed, but of which they will not even delay the death of an infant. Quite a number of other medicines of different kinds, such as the theriac which is wrongly praised against the shovel, camphor, the spirit of sweet nitre, have had no success. Otl must therefore conclude that the horrible nature of this evil Wins very much the virtues of all the remedies known until now, even those which would best be suited to tame it. The analogy and the preceding observations lead me to put more con-trust in cinchona and acids, given in large quantities, than in any other remedy; by adding to it, to bring out the weak food of the patient, camphor, the elixir of vitriol, the wine and the wounds. Those who die in the nervous state, may be kidnapped by a violent affection of the medullary subftance of the brain; the others by a very putrid fever of a peculiar nature.

* (a) Chenot: "form Paste," ^ (pag. l6) ^ [i]

C. The Four-7 nitrites.

Some patients found that they were somewhat trampled by mild emetics, such as the root of ipecacuanha. A surgeon who had brought a great supply of James' powder from England gave it to the sick; but I did not say that it had a better effect.

D. Purgatives.

Purgatives, even the lightest, do much harm; They added to a stomach course that could barely be stopped, -SC which extremely weakens the sick.

E. Psychology.

Sydenham consèigne the faith-g qynex at the beginning: surround the peste, before the tumors appear on the surface of the body; he marks to have healed by there a lot of patients (/ ^): Sorbait (c) on the contrary admits to having learned by a trill experience, that most of those who were laignées were dead. I look at the scallop as very annoying in the shovel. I would not, however, want to completely disintegrate it, abruptly, where the nervous state produces in inflammatory people an inflammatory disease with phrenesia (d); which happened very - rarely in Moscow's shovel, as well as in the one which Mr. Chenot makes the hilt (^).

F. The treatment of Bubons.

When the venom is already entirely mixed with the moods, and it comes to c-auro siempre.

(+6) Se ^. II, cap. I. Ruflel, "The natural hislory of Alleppo," ^ (pag. 242), writes, that in Aleppo's shovel in 1742 - 1744, "a strong feign-a made good on the first day of the disease, & that later it was always hurtful."

THE MALT OF FANG, NATURE IS TRYING TO DECEIVE barrier the material of the disease by deposits in the external glands. As soon as these glands begin to grow gray and hurt, they must be softened by cataplasms & emollient formentations, so that they more easily receive the moods that make them puffy, & that they manage to flee in suppuration & to maturity; for it is on this that healings depend. We make this happen, if these glandular tumors increase little by little, they become painful, and they become inflamed, the patient finding themselves crushed, and the symptoms diminish at the same time. You have to irritate the infallible buboons & flasques, by adding to the emollient poulstices, onions cooked in the ashes, or by putting detrius of stimulating plasters, like the diachylum with the gums, the melitote plaster, to which we add the vinegar; or the latter groans, regardless of the patient's great faith demands greater irritation. The bubo, when it is ripe, must be opened with a lancet, and breaded in the manner in which it is customary to treat abscesses; by fervent at the same time of internal remedies which refer to decay, & build up strength.

85. Treatment of the pestle.

Cinchona still fully responds to these two indications. The ulcers which emerge after the buboes do not close easily and slowly. Sometimes, though rarely, the patients heal as soon as the buboes go into suppuration; & it connects skin-rheuf tumors, which do not cause any other harm, than the slight inconvenience of swelling. We have also seen that buboes begin to dissipate, while the sick recover. but releasable cases were very rare.

I. The treatment of Coals ^ of Anthrax.

Coal is a purely symptomatic gangrenous disease, and is never critical; because the more coals, the more they make great; more afflicted well dangereusee (/): this is why T-anthrax (g)ell is worse than anthrax. All those who have written with a shovel, confiscate scar-i-fleur coals until the sharp, so that the escarre de déscrir is more easily known. We did in the shovel with paste.

In Moscow these scarifications applied to a lot of people, fans that they delayed their death. The repair of the escarre is the work of nature, & can, in this disease, only take place, when the degeneration putrid of the moods is already corrected to the point, which they make in a state to preserve the veil parts of the gangrenous: then the force of the circulating fire detaches the ends of the idle vessels from those who no longer receive le fang; & aft the faint parts around and at the bottom, detach from those that are gangrenous. When the condition of humours is as I have just said, scarifications facilitate the separation of the escarre, by delivering the living parts of the comprehension (/?).

Cinchona decoding formentations are also suitable here. L'orf- that the information on the voiced parts is considerable, before the fall of the escarre, it must be softened by the application of emollient poulstices. One must irritate the impenetrable coals & flakes by formentations & irritant antiseptic poulstices, f-cordium, street coal, & onion compost. The ulcers which the coals wilt require the external treatment which is suitable for other wounds, and the continuation of the antiseptics taken internally.

The pestechiae appear differently in the shovel; the most common, however, between the fertile and the fourth day: the danger is all the greater, as they show themselves rather soon. The pestechiae of the size of the lenses, and the vibices, make very bad lines. A one-year-old boy, whom I had seen in good health the day before, had several venticular pestechiae, purple lines, in different parts of the body, and among others, one the diameter of two lines on the forehead; he died the same day. Many patients already have pestechiae one or two days before their death; but in most of them they precede it by only a few hours. The more their color approaches black, the more they look bad: however the degree of danger cannot always be determined by the N color; since it sometimes happens that small purple spots grow on the chest.

88. Treatment of the head.

Treat the head & back soon before death (;), & let the shovel take away men of different manners, & confuse all the films with unexpected and astonishing symptoms. It is thus that those who we believe should die at the same hour, escape from it; & that, on the contrary, those which, according to light symptoms, the color of the spots and their strength, blossom for ^ see epitomely return, die dying. Nothing can be said before the fourth day; that one palpated, there is some hope of healing. Anything that can correct the putrid solution of blood, should authorize for pestechiae: no known cure hitherto has this virtue to a greater degree than cinchona & vitriolic acid.

I. The Failures of Cv Asphyxies.

Failures are frequent in the shovel, & there are asphyxias, in which the patients are likely to be dead: the inagilliates must therefore have hay that one does not bury personne, before one is well affable, then furious with death. This article demands all the more their attention, as those who make characters in Itaia: [., ■■■■' 1 1 - - ]

(i) See Sydenham, Sçcî. II ^ that ^. If,

89. Treatment of the punt.

Let the punt be aged to remove the corpses, deprived of all humanity broke out by the af-pecl; continual of so many evils, fill the wagons with the same cold fang as the butchers load them with calves and slaughtered sheep.

A. Diet.

The proper diet for puffy fevers is also good for eating. I jammed well fermented beer, or soaked wine for the convales & convalescents scents: "sense nothing" is better for strengthening Languiian spirits, & for raising strength.

B. Irons.

It happens sometimes in the small, that the patients make round worms from above & from below; sometimes even in quantity. This is not a good omen, although the worms do not, as some people believe, neither the cause, nor the effect of the bitch. When the humors, and the bile in general, reach the highest degree of decay and acridity, the worms attach less to the intestines, and easily leave a dwelling, which no longer suits them.

C. Women grossest attacked by the pest almost all abort, & die from a hemorrhage of matrix.

Before finishing this chapter, I cannot refrain from reporting M. Chenent's sentiment as the antidote to the painter (^): "The real 53 antidote to the painter is unknown & will restera 53 can -always be, unless we are 53 following a different route than our predecessors; & let us not falter, & repeat the experiments 53 which will allow us to reach a certainty in this respect. The uselessness 53 of the formulated remedies, used for 53 so many centuries, shows that it is in the semi-53 magpies that we must seek this antidote. The small 53 number of specifics that we spotted, 55 being all simple, indicate the same 53 echote by analogy. In fact, if opium scours pains, if cinchona chaff 55 fever, if mercury cures venereal disease, 53 or at least makes it stronger in the body, if 53 hemlock or cancerous skirrhes, who 53 ofera to assert that God did not create, and granted 53 to men, a particular remedy 55 against the most cruel of diseases. He 55 offers it to us perhaps in plants, which we wind." ['De Peste,' ^ (pag. 288) - ]

”Let us see being born in great quantity in certain X years and in certain times, although (*)rare besides; or even that we have not seen 53 before in such regions or in such 33 places; in those, that blind confidence 33 that we put in known remedies, 33 despises, or at least that our inattention 33 makes us neglect: perhaps it is contained 33 in composted remedies, but in a way that 33 its virtues make it destroyed or rendered ineffective. Perhaps the remedies, which we use for other purposes, contain it. Perhaps it is found in plants whose virtues we do not know; maybe in 33 those we regard as suspectes; 33 maybe even 'in véné neufes', in 33 animals, or finally in minerals.“ 33

"Fresco painting said to represent St. Martha protecting under her cloak members of a brotherhood devoted to burying the bodies of plague victims; in the church of St. Martha at Carona, near Lugano."

(III.v) Precautions against PLAGUE.

The general precautions to provide the borders of the states against the shovel, make it well established in all the Christian pusillsances of Europe, where they are necessary, that the entrance is closed to it on all sides, & that it does not may enter it, unless negligence gives rise to it. I will mention this below.

I. Precautions during the wars against the Turks.

Before coming to what I think is necessary to prevent the further progress of the contamination in places where the shovel has already entered, I think it will not be useless to say in a few words the precautions that one must take, during the wars with the Turks, in order to preserve as much as polite the armies of the shovel; & to add how one could prevent that from the theater of the war it was not transported in other provinces.

We favor that, since many siècles, the Turks have done more harm to their enemies by bringing them the shovel, than by their weapons. In the crusades, since the end of the eleventh century until that of the thirteenth, the peoples of different parts of Europe, running to the holy land, have seen many times the greater part of their armies, wounded by the shovel in Ali'e & in Africa.

After the prize of Constantinople by the Turks in the fifteenth century, & the destruction of the Eastern Empire, there rose from time to time wars between them & the Germans, the Polonois & the RulTs, in which the shovel ravaged the armies of these peoples, & entered their countries.

It is very difficult in wars with the Turks, to fully preserve the armies from this disease: after the battles, the soldiers seize the spoils of the vanquished, and take away the prisoners; if it among them, both they and their effects communicate it to others.

But the progress of the shovel can be stopped in the armies, if it is ordered that all the sick must first be transported to hospitals, & that none connects among the foolish people; faith doctors & surgeons carefully observe the symptoms of diseases; as soon as they find someone attacked by the little one, they send him with his clothes, son lit, & c. (rt) at a hospital designated for this disease & suitably distant from the army;

It has been said that the arms of the pestiferous were washed with vinegar, before giving them to others; & h the trophies link long exposed to the open air.

When we take a city, where we still find traces of the pest, before housing the soldats in the maisons, we must perfume the rooms with gunpowder, or:" fi do fe fe" ^, choose that no pestistéré * lived. General General, Count Pierre Yvanowitfch de Panini, winner of the Turks in Bender, told me that when he started the siège of this city, the little girl wreaked havoc there, and that she finished there before he had killed it; what he thought he should attribute to the smoke of the powder, which grew by so many mouths of fire, and surrounded the afflicted night and day. I am of the same opinion.

It is certain that all the acids destroy the germ of loss; the powder is mainly composed of soutre & nitre; during the detonation, there are strong spirits mineral acids, which take the form of very soft vapors, penetrate everything. The souk(.), fire & nitre also form the battle of anti-pertilential fumigant powder, which we fervor in Moscow (Cb).

* (a) It is better to say here: "that the straw at which he slept, must be burnt."

Between the countries, which make the theater of war, & the interior provinces, lines must be drawn guarded by stakes, that personne, whatever condition it may not be able to leave. On the main roads near these lines, quarantine maisons will be established, with several separate rooms, where all those who will return from the army, must, before leaving further, stop at for a long time that he will be necessary to remove any bad luck as far as their loss is concerned. Precautions must be observed. lying down: the herds will be removed from the SC chests expelled to the open air. If someone has been attacked with a shovel, they must be transported to the hospital ^ purify & perfume the room he occupies. The hidden Point: No merchant will be able to enter, unless they have made a mistake in the tests, and the same choice will be made as for the trophies. The couriers will deposit letters* there, which, after having been pricked with pins, sliced in vinegar, & cracked with the smoke of juniper wood, will be given to others; these staying below the lines, will carry them further.

(6) The experiments of M. Prieftley show that nitrous air has the faculty of preserving animal substances from decay, and even of destroying the putrefactive when it start. See: "Experiments and observarions on different Kinds of air-(y) [London"]. 1774, [feH. VI (y), pag. 123 ^ Jul.]

II. Aphorisms: "At the beginning of the pest." *

The strength of the doctors is trifling & deplorable from the beginning of the pest until the end; unless after having declared it to the Magistrates, & that by working first in concert with them of all their power to the to destroy, they are never happy to suffocate it, unseen by everyone, as soon as it appears. Because when it has spread to the point that the precautions that this disease requires of them dissipate nature and dangers, they have to supply the insults of their fellow citizens, especially merchants and other people eager for gain, who ordinarily deny that it is the same, because it has not yet killed several thousand men. The only resource which connects physicians to such circumstances is in the testimony of their own conscience, in religion, and the love of the profession. Chains, fire fuels capable of fountains of strength, their courage against the insults and the adversités, which anger them on all sides. So then, after having done everything well, they have only to flee from the movement of their conscience, and hand over to God the hay of their comfort, their tranquility and their reputation. When in February 1771 we believe that we had entirely removed the shovel from its origin, our joy was inexpressible; & we willingly supported the insults of those whom we imagined then to have prejudiced with a great misfortune. In the fort of calamity, when the shovel ravages everything with the greatest fury, & that personne no longer doubts the nature of the evil, the doctors still find themselves in very terrible circumstances; since, in addition to the danger they continually run with their families, they bear witness to the great number of. that. the lost(.) dead in pain. But how unhappy must be the one to whom conscience reproaches that it is he who, through negligence, is responsible for so many evils; or may their fellow citizens act with eagerness to have attracted them to them out of ignorance!

III. Aphorisms. "You have to stifle the little pestle when it starts."

When in a city or in any other place, one meets a disease which completely corresponds to the definition I have given (c), that is to say, acute, very rapid in its course; in which, between the fruitful and the fourth day, there are buboes, coals, pestechiae of different sizes and different colors; which is then very contagious, and begins the craziest wind with headaches, and vomiting; if there is at the same time the possibility that this disease has been brought by trade, by war or by some other means, from places where the child reigns; doctors can make it clear to the government that they know that this is the little one, while they make it a secret in the eyes of their fellow citizens, so as not to cause spindle terror, & to do harm to all.

CHAPTER IV. - THE PLAGUE DOCTOR

"This mould of the Carolinas, to dust you should grind it
& throw't against the wind to the market-place: Thou shallth receive alms!"

Dr. Medici fans ignored; The high degree of contagion makes one of the main charaders of the shovel, it is irrelevant to doctors to determine blindly that it, according to the first or the fertile individual who, in a country or a city, makes attacked with a semble of evil, though all the other sympto-my are there; all in all the shovel does not reign in the winding. This doubt can be resolved in a few days; for if it shovels it, it will also attack other people who live in the same room as the sick. When doctors, whose science & probity are recognized, denounce that they are convinced of the preference of the shovel; the magilli'ats must:, fans watch out for the opposite senitimentimens of other doctors, take care of public misconduct j by relegating the rather possible to the film-makers, & those who are coigitagion j out of town in an isolated maison that they will surround of guards ^ so that no one could communicate with them. A family infidel encléve can j focus any pretext, be alibi ili transported at night-j so that the inhabitants do not succeed that this shovel 5 Gar(u).d contagion (u)ell in a manifoil sheet.!

100. Precautions against pestîe.

It can easily be extinguished in fact. If he rejects the magillates still in doubt as to the nature of the evil, they have only to lock up a few people condemned to death with the patients, and put them on their clothes, while not neglecting anything as to the precautions: two or three females will suffice to reach in truth, because the bitch has a habit of running away from the infection.

A. L'orf qiie la pestie is disclosed.

When many Maisons are indebted, it is impossible to make a mystery of it to the public, because the precautions which one must necessarily take disclose everything. In such a case the pestiferous, and all those who have remained with them, must no longer have any communication with the rebel of the inhabitants. It is necessary to burn the effects of the patients, except those of solid & hard consistance, which it will be enough to wash with vinegar. What is thrown into the fire should not be touched, but taken with pliers & sticks armed with hooks; it is the same way that dead bodies have to be loaded on the wagons which transport them to the sites of the nursery. We must appoint men of recognized probity, firm precautions against the pilfer: "lore & re folius", which prevent by their preference & by their authority, that nothing is diverted. We must also urge relatives and friends of the sick to burn their clothes or other effects that they may have received few dyes from before: & the doctors must take care of their health, to see that none of them will do attacked by the pest.

A court of fantasy, he made up of a few personnes, quality oft marked for two or three doctors of medicine & as many citizens as will direct, crazy about the authority of the magistrate, all that concerns public health. He will divide the city into quarters, in each of which he will put a doctor who will check up all the sick; he will order the inhabitants to warn as soon as someone of their families falls ill; & statutera of the "gold faith" direct that personnes can not be buried before a doctor has examined the body & has given a note in which he was marked with what disease he died. If the number of doctors is not sufficient; we will employ there other marked surgeons.

The poverty of the people & the greed of others have always been and by all means are the main causes by which we have spread the contagion. The poor man, who fears hunger more than dead, he saw with pain deprived of the inheritance of a relative or an ally; & in the perception that it is an injustice that is done to him, he tries to seize in force, forget all that he can: the other attracted by the lure of gain, does not know any more fear, provided he can buy at a low price. There is only one effective remedy against this evil, fans which we have nothing to expect from all the other precautions; it’s to pull a somnia from the public treasury, who is happy to pay for the inhallant everything that is thrown into the fire. Indeed, the fort of those, whose family is attacked with the shovel, is after trill: losing their loved ones, &; separated from society, they await death; why do they still have to endure the loss of their effects, (faith have no hope); but even foresee the extreme poverty that awaits them, if they survive? Qi'on so shock if Te citizens, who put a Julie prizes for the effects that we bridle, & pay them; or else that they deposit this money in a public cough cause, with the names of those to whom it belongs, so that if they recover, we re-read it to them, & if they die, it is given to their heirs. Both the infected and those who spread contagion should be fed and enter.

B. Freezing against the mother.

103 held at public expense: humanity and the conservation-i of other inhabitants demand it. It is necessary to define at this point an Indebtenmie go considerable, so that in case of need, nothing für delay. If one arranges all of the strong as of the knowledge of the shovel, that will not require much of despenses, the contagion will be easily stopped, & the evil stifled in its origin. When the child is finished, all those who are cured of it, or will have sickened the sick, will still have to link locked up until it is absolutely safe & beyond doubt, that there is nothing more to fear from their communication for the other citizens. It was used by all European nations at the end of the forty-day trial, from which it was named quarantine; I will say below my resentment. Before allowing them a free communication with the relies of the inhabitants, it is necessary to strip them of their clothes, to wash them with vinegar by all the body, to give them other clothes, to burn the old ones with the connects of effects, & to perfume the maison with fumigated powder anti-pestilential roof. This done, however, the other precautions should not be neglected yet; but look for several months, (fl) the germ of the pest was not hidden anywhere; No one has locked up in coffers, or buried infested clothes or merchandise; because the small rind, when we least expect it, to be reborn from a femable source, The pestilential germ contained in herds, or enclosed in bundles, becomes worse, & can be transported from the strong to great diftances & conservé longderms. The defluiding power of this venom increases so much, when it is enclosed in bundles of well covered clothes, that there are examples of men who were attacked with the most violent symptoms, died suspiciously when opening them (^ d). In the last century, a year after the little girl had celebrated in Varfpvie, Erndtel, who brought back the fleeting history, went there to go with the court to Marienbourg & to Danzick: in the city of Langenfürth the wife of a coachman, ready to give birth, carried mattresses in the month of Octobre, in which people who had died of the death had slept a year before. Being fervent, she was soon attacked with the same disease with buboes in the groin, soon after she gave birth happily; but having suffered a hemorrhage from the womb, she died, as did her child. The husband also perished soon after having buboes and coals; & several other people were uninfected, of which more than twenty died. This contagion lasted until February, but the fans did more damage, because people belonging to the court were scattered in several countryside & villages; at the beginning of March it was quite sure (^).

(IV.vi) When the little ruler reigned.

105. Frêscantations contre la peste.

When this evil is already widespread, it becomes infinitely more difficult to stop & threatens of an imminent great calamity. However, we must not entirely defecate: for if on the one hand the government and the fancy court are using it with all their power, & that on the other the inhabitants make docile, the precept may still be arrested, für -everything is favorable. We must first prevent when it is not transported in the surfacing,. & in other places. We will do well then to declare by a printed form, that it is: the reigning peste, that contagion does not exist in the air, but that it communicates only by the contact of the sick & infected chokes; the inhabitants will be enjoined to obey by weight the orders which will be given for public safety, and the preservation of individuals; they will be exhorted not to buy clothes or effects that have already been fervent: besides, no one will allow anyone to sell them. In addition, if the peste is only in one part of the city, we will remove all communication with the reste.

(e) Erndtel JV: "Arflavia physice illujîrata" ^ (pa§, 171 » 172).

In the beginning, when there are only a small number of infested families, public deceit demands that they be transported out of the city, or else that they be relegated there to a remote place, and that all commerce with other citizens they are forbidden; which must be done with humanity, with gentleness, & with the least inconvenience that is possible for these unfortunates. But when by misfortune, or by neglect, the calamity has come to the point, which many people make attacked by the peste, and that it is diffused by all 10 * 7 city; it no longer links - to hope that these pre-sureties can uproot it entirely. It would then be inhuman & barbarous to disturb so many unfortunate families, by forcibly repairing the sick of those who are still in a state of health, by depriving the father of hay & the preference of children, the wife of those of my husband, the old man of those in the family. In such circumstances it worsens the evil, in some way forcing the patients to hide their condition. It is, moreover, impossible to arrange convenient places, alfez vastes, to contain a large number of them. However, nothing should be neglected in order to oppose a terrible goldline faith evil, which fc spreads from all sides by contagion.

In this funeral situation the misfortune is all the greater, that, whatever one could imagine, one finds nothing which answers on all sides to the humanity with which one must furrow them. unfortunate & the afflicted, & h what the public deceit demands. If you take their family mothers, mothers, euphans, and send them to hospitals; you take away from them the consolation that refutes them, you add new evils to misfortune, & you throw men out of a denial, io8 that rie ajie will make more able to stop. Qi'ioi- that the other end seems less inhuman; it is, however, cruel and fatal to the public good to neglect everything, and to give free rein to contagion; because the shovel will ravage cities and entire provinces. It is therefore necessary to choose the medium between these two ends.

Whether a hospital is deflected with the maisons of the veils, or else an entire suburb (/), to the poor attacked by the poor; & that all (/) The sick, if not scattered in many ways, will less harm each other; they will breathe purer air, and will re-establish more easily. Mead advises to make the crazy pestiferes camp tents; I believe that nothing better can be imagined to stop the contagion: but the way, the climate or other circumstances make this means impractical; the doors and windows of the patients' rooms must therefore be kept open, and the air in continuous movement maintained there. The exhibition in the wind is the main reason why the pervert does less havoc in the armies that they are capturing; for, although the wind has very little power over the venom which is intimately mixed with the fang, it nevertheless carries away the exhalations, and more rapidly destripe them; strong that well-doers neither come out of gold faith quickly, nor easily easily infested by the sick.

what is necessary for life & for their treatment, should be financed & well ordered, that these informants go there willingly, fans who force whoever it may be go. That others should be allowed to return to their homes, provided that the infested mayons have a common line, which makes them recognize, so that the faint people enter it only with caution. That the fate court publish, how they must lead near the sick, warning them to keep the doors or windows open, to avoid the breath of the pestiféré, the let us exhale from their bodies & their excrements; to perfume the rooms with vinegar, and, as long as possible, not to touch with bare hands neither men nor infed effects; or, if they have touched them, to dip their hands in the vinegar first.

Priests, doctors, surgeons & nurses must be appointed to take care of the people; & grant them good fees.

Magistrates must be careful that the corpses do not connect long time with the fans of the culture, but simply the space of dyes necessary to conflate death.

lïo. Precautions against pestie.

It is necessary to equip those who bury the dead against Contagion, by giving them coats &; gloves of oilcloth, which they must wash washed in vinegar; & so that they do not take the corpses with their hands, we can leave various instrumes with kiquels and they will remove them.

The places delinéated with the burial will make out of the cities, & with some brightness of the great ways: one will put the corpses in deep soltes, one will always cover them with a layer of ground, to stop the exhalations of them, & to prevent that the dogs or the crows take away scraps of it.

I have already demonstrated that the atmosphere at Moscow, in the very shovel, has always been foolish, and not at all contagious, not only in winter, but even in the middle of summer, where the way it is in this city is neither warmer than in the other parts of Europe, except those which are quite at noon, the Réaumur thermometer continually marking 'from frieze to twenty- two degrees to the shade in the middle of the day, and sometimes even twenty-four.' But the quantity of corpses- of cliff-tlers kept for a long time fans of the Sc sculpture, it $

pour- "Precautions against pestîe, iii roi-eiit" so charge the atmosphere of their exhalaifoiîs, that it even, by which besides this evil does not spread, would become, in summer all over all, contagious and would carry an inevitable destruction in the veining. We make that dead and decaying animals spread a strong stench by the exhalations with which they fill. The atmosphere which surrounds them; & although these exhalations contain no pestilential venom, they nevertheless cause malignant putrid fevers, Several authors report the fate of femable blade epidemic diseases, occasionées by the stench which fortified corpses men entaflée after fights, or bodies of animals which rot in the stagnant waters & along the shores. Entr'au- 'SSTF Forestus' (^) is the history of a disease very malignant epidemic, caused by énorme [p-oil] Ton-kind of whales, rotting on shore of the sea. How much more reason your putréfaciâtion of corpses must not have a destructive power in the pest-(f), where the small exhalations of the sick are already worn by the fainthearted pearls.

(f) Lih. 4®. "Obfcrvüt. IX", (tom. 202).

II2. Precautions against pestîe.

From the exhibition of merchant herds at Nvejît:

"The pestilential venom is blown away by the wind, but I would not want to conclude from this that for the furnishing of clothes, mattresses, wool, cotton, furs and other stuffable stuffs, it is enough to ex-pose(r) in the open air & in the wind: because we do not know how many dyes it takes for this; & it has been proven by observations, that in places where the bird had fled, there had been a long time after illnesses by the fire of effects which had been fervent to the sick, and which had been refuted even in the open air. Diemerbroek (ù) mentions an apothecary, who experiences acute pain in the lower part of the leg near the foot, as it had been burned by boiling water, after hastily stirring the straw with the right foot, eight months before which the mad domestic bed sick with the paw had been poisé; although it was refected during autumn & winter for a small roof, exposéd in wind, rain & cold. The (/ z) De Pejîe ^ [lib. 4®. 'observ'.-ll] ^. day day he went up to the sick part a big puff; when the epidermis was bitten, it fortified a little blackish water from it, & a pestilential coal was found, which healed hardly in the space of fifteen days; besides, the man in question was doing well; Who can therefore abolutely determine how, & how long, such and such an infected substance must be blown to the wind; so that it no longer contains anything weak? This must still be very different, respectively, at the various degrees of heat; coldness, humidity & feverishness of the atmosphere; it will always be more and more time to shovel to burn the effects (i) which retain this venom, and to wash the more compact chad faiths, like wood, with vinegar; metals, & c;"

(i): Hospital air will be corrected forced.

The main ones make wool, furs, plunges, cotton, hemp, sheets, linen, livers, paper. Flour, wine, water never contain this venom, unless they have the quantity of heterogeneous parts which contain it; the vinegar Ip destroyed. 11 does not penetrate hard substances like metals, marked wood,^ & glass; but it attaches to their stuperfic wind;

II4. F-recalibrations against the pestle.

After the destructve is annihilated, by renewing it continuously by the doors & windows, & by lighting up cannon powder, or throwing vinegar out of the bricks burning: the rooms must be high, and as few patients as possible can be accommodated in each. The priests, the doctors, the surgeons, and all those who hay the sick, will put on their clothes a coat made of oilcloth; they will have gloves & boots of the same material; they will soak them just in vinegar, & will hold in the mouth & in the nose a sponge soaked in this liquor.

A. The way in which we purify the inferior mission rooms.

The mansions & the rooms where the patients of the shovel have remained, are purified by the smoke of gunpowder. We are my service at Moscow with the success of a powder which is called anti-pestilential, the base of which was the soutre & the nitre; we had added fon & a few plants, arbotanum, juniper berries & other femable blades, & overflows with reins: but in my opinion these resins are completely useless, & increase-tenth the price of the powder (^). The mineral acid spirits detached in the detonation of the nitre with the soutre free, are kept for a long time stupendis in the air by the smoke of plants. The more or less strength of these powders for de-fumigation.

Mix depends on the proportion of the soutre & nitre to the other ingredients. After having burned the rags found in the rooms, they are filled with smoke, by throwing this powder on a baking dish; doors and windows are closed to keep this smoke away for a long time. It is harmful to the lungs, and suffocates; that's why whoever throws it away hot coals, must flee first: this operation is repeated three or four times with:

The first is to perfume the maisons & the very unyielding effects, wools, beliefs, leathers, & c. The impregnated was defined with the suspect maisons: your delicate materials that the first would have spoiled; the third was used for inhabited maisons. X times in twenty-four hours for a few consecutive days, and when x fled, doors and windows are opened.

B. How one should burn the unbound effects.

When burning herds, mattresses, blankets, & c. which have been fervent to the poor, we should not be exposed to the smoke: because the most volatile particles of the venom could rise into the air by heat, before they fulfill destroyed by the aelion of fire.

"That way," said Chenot, "we have He saw a valet who had imprudently exhaled himself from the smoke of infected effects which he was burning, to bring the bastard home (/). 33 Sorbait (7; /) & Lobb (77) are not afraid that the combustion of the effects will affect those who are affected by it; but even, let it not spread the contagion in the city. The vein diluted & diffused to a certain defiance in the atmosphere, no longer harms;, there is nothing to fear from the combustion of the infected effects, finally for those who approach it."

The precautions against peste, too close, and reflected from the outset, surround the smoky smoke which in strong; that we can prevent au-Oi by throwing in Me-/"time me" in the heat of gunpowder, or an-pestilentielle powder, which by their vapors destroy the particles of venom [- ^ nin], if in pupil with smoke. There is infinitely more rage in burning the infested effects than in burying them, as some authors confuse, by covering them with earth or lime: for avarice could lead people to dig them up, marked or unmarked mass graves.

C. Acids.

The vinegar destroys the pestilential venom, which attaches itself to compact & hard bodies: when this prints more, than it is: held in soft substances & spongieu- » s-faiths like pelts, wool, cotton, & c. the vinegar can not reach them; but the mineral acids in the form of vapors, penetrating their pores, and reaching even the smallest recesses, destroy the miasma which is squeezed in there, provided that these vapors foist al-Fez so strong as not to lick any unadorned particles. It is true that these vapors eat away at the sheets themselves, and the furs. I do what we did experiments with fumigation powder anti-pestilential; I mean, that we infused infected pestiliifes with this powder, and that we had them put to criminals who, however, are connected well-being: but as these experiences were made at the end of shovel during the great cold (0), when the miasma had become weaker, it can not be concluded that pestiliifes & other feminizable effects, perfumed with the strong, would at any time get rid of the venom. The smallest contagious particle, which would have escaped by chance the effect of the vapors, would deceive the hope that one would have conceived of it. It will therefore always be more careful, and more tricky the goldline civil war in the Dangkreufe faith case, to burn infed effects; moreover, this will not cause much more damage than fumigation, which, when done properly, gnaws at them and makes them almost useless.

D. The vinegar of the four thieves.

I must remove from the prophylactic vinegar, otherwise known as the four thieves, a "120 Precautions against life. part of fame, acquiesces inappropriately; since it has no more preferential virtue than ordinary vinegar, and it does not oppose more than this against the contagion. The qualities that I have attributed to any vinegar in general, therefore suit him well, but nothing more."

■ IW I— - (o) See above, chap. I, note (r) [pag. 36 ^ 37].

E. Prejudice.

Among the prejudices received with regard to the child, one of the first, and generally preferred opinion, is that fear causes this disease when it prevails; or in less than the timid and terrified people make it easily attacked, "L'orf que la peste devastate the city of J-Moscow," prefect all the gentlemen had fled; in addition to a large part of the people, there were only a few families of these nobles, merchants and foreigners: except the populace, the link of the inhabitants was ex-consort. So much in the greatest fright, in spite of our efforts to raise their slaughtered spirits by different means, assuring them that they had nothing to fear, provided they were careful and circumfed. The common people, on the contrary, imbued with certain principles of predestination, do not fear nothing; & we warn them to take the necessary precautions for the preservation of each of them, the majority replied, that just as a hair cannot fall from the head of the man sans the will of God, they did not have nothing to fear, faith in their last hour, mara- that the divinity had not come; & that if it had arrived, all precautions were useless. The better educated people answered them with us, that the creator has given the raison & the judgment to men to make them distinguish good from evil, so that they seek to obtain the one, & to avoid the other; but it was to speak in vain. They took the belongings which returned to them by inheritance in secret, or they diverted them; they touch the sick and the corpses with their bare hands, and embroider them, fleeing from their former use. These reckless & intrepid people wore presta that the weight of the calamity is shrouded, while the other inhabitants, though fearful, declare vain falsehoods in the same city; whence we must conclude, that fear and terror in times of death do not give it, and that on the other hand courageous courage in no way exempts it. At month August, when many people died in my neighborhood, my wife learned that a personne, who the day before had been with another who lived in my house, had died of the shovel; "elf roi" fault she takes an inflammatory hare with heart disease. After two foot tricks, she faith finds better the next day, although still having the hare. In the meantime comes one of her friends, who has just returned from a sailing campaign, where we believe that the shovel was not yet; she says in tears that she has fled and that she has just asked style for a friend, because the same morning she found outside the door of her bedroom in a shoddy death of shovel. My patient, having scarcely heard this account, fell in faith, and had all the symptoms of the day before; for several days it reigned over the strong between life and death. She finally returned entirely, & neither she nor son friend, never felt anything that looked like a shovel. I could join here a number of other scraps of diseases caused by anxiety and fear at the same time that the shovel will cause the greatest damage; there is no day that we weren't called in people who were attacked by such or such other disease, only affected by fear. I believe, however, that the troubles of the soul worsen more serious symptoms in the indebted, that they cause the sick to find themselves more ill, and to cure more difficultly, for they generally produce nervous nerves, prevent sweating.

According to what we read (/?) That Hippocrates made celebrate the bishop of Athens by lighting fires, many authors recommend them in such circumstances. We have read different plants in Moscow since the beginning of the pest, not only in the crossroads and public places, but in front of each maison, so that the whole city was continually covered with smoky hair. The contagion did not go any more slowly, nor the families whose maisons were surrounded by a greater number of fires, were not more exempt from it. We find that the same choice arrived during the peste which the year 1721 devastated Toulon (^). If the epidemic disease of Athens, of which it is a question, was the real scapegoat, there is no doubt that the blazing fires could not have made it last; but that there must be in a contest other circumstances to destroy a cruel plague, all in all in a very hot country. It seems to me rather believable, that it was a popular disease, causé by an air charged with putrid vapors, in a city which contained, besides ■ the citizens, a multitude of entangled men, who had taken refuge there from the countryside (r); these exhalations will have been corrected.

(r). Plutarch, in 'The Life of Nicîas Athénien', contemporary of Hippocrates, reports the cause of this disease in the fleeting way: For what is "of the peste which Athens was afflicted, the main reproach in fact due to Pericles, who locked up in the "city, to cause of the war, all the people of the +5 countryside, which by the change of places & w by the different way of life, produced this “horrible contagion”. Plutarch in 'The Life of Nicias,' Edit. in-4®. by M. Dacier, tom. IV, (pag. 531): -"Pericles is therefore accused of having overshadowed the Vrkautîom against the pestie. $ 12 for fires made from aromatic herbs, or else the wind, which these fires excited, will have diffused them, and thus put an end to this epidemic evil." Hippocrates does not define by the word 'loumos' the peste proper, but a fever common to several inhabitants of the same place. When he gives the division of fevers, he says: “There are two kinds of fevers; one common to all, is called peste Joïmos \ Sc (au-53) being from a bad diet particular 33, happens to those with a bad diet 3 or x-'diet 33. [De Flatibus, cap, 3.] See: Van Swieten, "Commentary in Aphorisms", Boerhav. § tom. II, (pag. 10).

(IV.vii) The condom remedies.

It would be tedious to mention all the condoms advocated by the authors who have epidemic disease by causing the people of the countryside, like war, to stay in the city; the competition and the mass of so many men in a closed city produced this evil rather than the change of places and way of life, as Plutarch believes. In all times, and in all countries, we have Fervent that putrid epidemic & contagious fevers have ravaged the Aflégées cities, filled with a large number of habitas written by pest; I will choose the principal ones * according to which the end can easily judge what one must think of the others.

I. Les Cautères. *

All these authors recommend cautery on one arm or one leg, or on one and the other at the same time, & allege several examples of people who have lived among the people, & who by this means make vain & fauls. Some people in Mosow had fonticles; I wore it myself one open for a whole year on my left arm: but having neglected the precautions more than the other doctors who had no cautery, & refraining like them from touching the sick & the infected chokes * I-(n): 'then conclude nothing. M. Yagelsky, who directed the principal hospital, told me that among the surgeons who treated the patients there, there were four who had cautery, and that nevertheless they were dead; he added that he was unaware, however, of the work with which they were overwhelmed, had not made them neglect to bread them and to keep them open.' This is why everything that is said about it seems to me still very doubtful: but puis, que... a lot of authors recommend them, and that they causais little inconvenience, I recommend to all those who are forced to live among the pestiférés, to have one, & not to neglect at the same time the other precautions, afraid that if they are deprived of their hopes, they will not themselves take the pest, or that by remaining sheltered from them they will interfere with others. The doctors and surgeons who carefully warn the sick in particular maisons , do not make 11 exposés to the contagion, & cannot better to be preserved some: but like the peste could have entered the maison of found marked children, where most people obeyed despite themselves the precautions that I had prescribed, and that then it would have wreaked great havoc among so many children, guards & valets, I had made myself a cautere in advance, so that if this had happened, he would have been in perfect suppuration; what these same authors deem necessary.

Many people believe that virulent gonorrhea & ulcers are better than peste. We have seen many personnées, who make them dead, though having these inconveniences. Notwithstanding that in many other patients there were many who had cachexia and other chromatic ills, it seems, however, that contagion attacks more easily the foolish and roaring people, than the weak and the old. He was an old gentleman, very tasty, returned to the shelter of the shovel in the same room where the woman died of this disease, although Fez, que domeqelliques of one and the other faith-(x) were involved.

Some people regarded the spirit of sweet nitre as an excellent condom; they took several times a day twenty to thirty drops of sugar. Others advocate crazy cinchona for this same purpose different forms; but as all these people avoid contagion at the same time, the prefervative virtues of these remedies are still very doubtful.

II. The Amulets.

When we confine the violence of evil to the force of contagion, it will not be surprising that men have always imagined condoms. They have also blinkered in the amulets of specific virtues, which prefigure them with an evil which they see acting as so many people by a hidden power. The principal chokes, of which one faith-(f) in small, make arsenic & camphor; We wear the first wrapped in linen & fuse-pcn: from the neck by a stilj so that it falls für le ^ eternimi or the hollow of the stomach (^): we carry the camphor corfü in pluterifîcs, satyrs, places of clothing, or well in their pockets j. The raison & the experience convince, fans doubt, that nothing should be hoped for from these j iii other eels.

III. The smoke of the great act of truth.

Diemerbroeck attributes large Vërtui preservatives to tobacco smoke, & after her other authors have claimed the same choke:

(5) "No whining, it has no virtue" [00 * 11] - being the shovel; but even Diemerbroeck saw that 'an amulette arsenical, which imposteürs sold Fortcher; like a sovereign prefect, cause-a to many people an inner ardor & anguish; he brought them black swarms in the middle of the chest where they carried him; these personnes faith believe attacked with the shovel, but the swarms faith diffuse as soon as one had removed the amuleti.' Dimerbroeck ('dç pejh', lib ^ IF, cap. 99i )

NOTE: (C) See Chenot, "de pestie", (pag. 242.)

In such a way that it is generally believed that this smoke keeps the bitch away. We make the Turks continually have a pipe in their mouths, & however, the bitch kills many of them every year. This reflection could not remove the prejudice: it is so difficult to destroy a received opinion, whatever it may be. When the little girl spread to Moscow, a lot of Ruffé gentlemen, and the foreigners put all their hope in the tobacco smoke, as in an infallible condom. Those who were accustomed to it smoked more frankly, and the others got used to it little by little, until they saw that the pest also removed among the strangers people of very bad condition, in spite of the tobacco smoke which they faith fervent. The Chimney Sweeper maison of found children, which had been folded Prussian in the past, has caused so many cases of tobacco smoke, that since early morning that at the fair we saw him with a pipe: & by this raison he pretends that the little can never attack him. Not taking any precautions, even in the month of September, he crossed the hedge during the night which closed the enclosure of the house of found children, to go and see his wife & his friends iqiLii are in town. Suddenly he got a headache, he started to vomit, and had the next day a groin bubo & crazy raifTelle; there was added a great depression and fever; he died after two times twenty-four hours. His apprentice, aged twelve, had a large bubbly bubbling in the garlic, and soon followed him.

NOTE:It is common belief that there is no other disease to be found in your skin; During this whole year 1771, I have treated Sporadic diseases of all kinds; even measles was epidemic. In the quarantines at the convent of Saint-Simon, Sev-i(n) iciirs children took the disease.

IV. Precautions coutinuellernent.

7 inéfficaires in the eindroits exposed to contagion, border countries: neigh-bor Jîns of the Turks.

By all that has been reported above, it has been demonstrated how necessary it is to kill bojines across the borders of provinces which have those of the Turks, to prevent men and merchants from puffing up there, to enter, before one is faith if that they do not bring the contagion. ['i11 ell i1'ii'] It is very difficult to determine exhaélement the space of times necessary so that one can puiff faith being in this respect in perfect security; because it depends, as for the merchants, not the whining of their different especies, more or less pro-close to enclosing the germ of the pest; but in addition to the different methods which one pretends to test whether they make infected or not. The venom penetrates fur skins, wool & cotton more strongly, and fixes itself more there than in hemp & in the liver: it attaches itself only to the surface area of ​​fetid chokes, metals, wood, & c. whence it detaches itself more easily, when it is blown in the wind, or washed. I believe, as does Mr. Chenot ("'Twas that by opening the sacks of wool, & cotton, that by detaching the packages & by extending them, we are much safer than by the superficial method;") of which he says that we certify in most quarantines. The miasma cannot remain hidden for a long time in the body of the man sans faith manifest by Fez effects, I hear the pest. Although it is very difficult to determine how many times it takes for this, it seems however that "proof elf" carried perhaps too far beyond the term necessary for Léul's men, when it is fixed at forty days (x), but there is as for that in each nation of different uses, established & confirmed by a long experience, from which one can not deviate furiously.

(iu) "De pest" (c, pag. $ 21.)

133. Frêscati stations against the pest.

Nothing demonstrates more the necessity of these precautions, than the security enjoyed by the countries on the borders of which they make fervently observed, although the shovel has afflicted their sails; as are the terrible calamities which have been caused by the slightest negligence in this respect; witness in this century the shovels of Marseille, Lisbon, Messme & Moscow. A piece of wire along a line, impregnated with smallpox pus, can after several months & perhaps years, produce small pox in a healthy man, who flees will infiltrate a thousand others; these will become like so many scent verily, from which an infinity of contagious rays will grow. The same faculty is observed in the petilential miasma; how much then should we not use hay to close it the entry of countries, & to prevent the smallest particle of this venom from entering it? You have to open all the packages; dikes marchaur & heres must be exposed to the open air; & for the sake of favor they must contain contagion, that the valets should recognize them; shedding molten with their bare arms: "When a traveler becomes ill, & he gets the symptoms of the shovel, the effects must be burned, except those of wood and metal, which are washed or soaked in vinegar" • and held for suspects, all those who have had some communication with him.

(at) See Chenot: "de Pestîc," (pag. 208 cf fuiv).

It is necessary to entrust the direction of the affîlures of santé in these places, to personnes of a recognized probity, of manners honest, & recommendables by their love for the fatherland; that 'no raison whatsoever,' nor any fear, could ever make their duties fail. It is necessary to put doctors and surgeons there, to whom the shovel and its symptoms make known, endowed with courage, and free of fear, so that in doubtful cases they will be able to observe cold fang, & that they will not spread vain terror, or do not deliver it up to dangerous safety.

135. Trêcati stations contre la pestîe.

Means by which the r-national jargon of the children found in Moscow was preserved by the father-(t).

I will aduellement include the means by le sequels I preserved the house of the children found to Mosco away beyond shovel all Tinto that this scourge has reigned in this city, where for the last six months he motion aloné so thousands of men. [From there everyone can easily understand how it tell pol-crucible in shovel tones to preserve it yourself, the family, whole maisons, private & public.

The hotel of the found children (y) is located in the middle of the city, at the confluence (Je la Yaufa & de la Mofeua). It occupies a location whose circumference, then provided with a hedge of six fixed feet high, has a third of (y) Cetastyle of innocence & misfortune occupies the first rank among all the Estable aliens, of the same kind in Europe, & is due to the munificence of the Empress Catherine Seconde. Faiths auf pi-ces & parles hay de M. de Retzky, who gener-li well deserved homeland by using faiths days & faiths goods to encourage the arts & public good, that this establishment touches faith perfedition.

1 ^ 6. Precautions against pestîe.

10 thousand from Germany (z). We build a considerable building there, which can easily contain five thousand children. The part of this building, which was already finished in 1769, was inhabited by a thousand children & three hundred adults; the reste, both masters, valets, workers & soldats, -almost a hundred in number, in wooden maisons adjoining that of precious stones in the enclosure. This enclosure had three doors. In July, as soon as I noticed that the little girl was spreading in the city, I begged the confidant of the maison to have the doors closed, with the exception of the one where the porter was, &; enter or fortify personne, fans the permission of the first oredeur; I asked, therefore, that flour, cloth, linen, scarves, and many other necessary items were bought in large quantities, in places such as loaves. When in the month of Aoiit, the shovel wreaked havoc, it was no longer permitted for anyone other than me to enter it. There were people in the pay of the maison, living outside my enclosure, who buy everything that was necessary for life, & wear the letters. I had given the porter a written order, in which everything he could let go was detailed, and with what precautions. The butcher threw the meat into large tubs full of vinegar, and the bursar's help removed it. I did not allow entry to furs, wool, feathers, cotton, hemp, paper, linen, bindery; we let them bake the breads of sugar after removing the paper & twine. The letters were pricked with a needle, and, after having soaked them in vinegar, they were chopped with the smoke of juniper wood. It was permissible for all those who lived there to speak with their relatives and friends, who pretended outside the door to a certain difference (fla). We were obliged to make buy in the month of Octobre two hundred pairs of boots & souliers; I made them stand for a few hours in the vinegar, and beaked out.

I. (?) Near a league of Françe.

I saw all the patients of the maison * {acL). I had destroyed at the door near the suis-Tc two barriers about 12 feet apart; the people who belonged to the maison faith te-no'ien(c) at the interior barrier, & those from outside at the interior, twice a day: two surgeons examine the others in the morning; & notify me when they find any inconvenience. Whenever something shoves me from a patient's house, I keep it away from others until I am as long as it is not the little one. It happened to me to find in this way, except times the pest between the soldats (/ i /?) & The workers of the maison of the children find- vés; but as I tore them apart at the first sign of evil, none of them infected others, except the master chimney sweep, who gave the pest to my apprentice. Since the month of July we no longer took children, nor received more women to make their diapers in the maison; I proposed to rent while waiting for this purpose a maison in the suburbs, which was not resolved until October (cc). He still died in town, then over a thousand men a day.

* (Jbb) There was always a guard of 22 men with a low officer; & since the month of July I have obtained that it was not changed.

(cc) We had great difficulty in putting this quarantine quarantine at the foot; first there were obstacles to overcome, which depended on the circumstances.

I make naked to strip the kids that we brought in this quarantine maison; or first burn their clothes, and after having washed them with vinegar and water, they are given other habiteniens. I held these children for fifteen days in three repaired rooms on the ground; & this time palsé, if he does not see any line of loss among them, they were put, after changing their clothes, cha- * nobody fleeing that he had finished this first test, in the main building of this quarantine prisoner, where they were staying another fortnight, before they were transported to the big hotel. I see these children every day, & women in childbirth (^ dd). We learn.

Annoying fiances where we were, then it was necessary to have a suitable maison: which delayed this arrangement until the month of Octobre. While waiting, several children are exposa at the door of the grand hotel; I kept them in a wooden block from the wall, and M. de Durnowo withdrew from them at his house; I put them all in the reception or "quai maison rantaine en question", as soon as it was ready, which happened in the month of November,

^ (dd) In this same quarantine period I had also established a small birthing hospital, forbore a child with a bubo pestilentieï, & Two others during the ten months of trial had the peste with buboes-(iee). I put them in separate rooms with their guards & in this way the contagion did not go any further. (//) I was thus fortunate to receive the grossest women there and to pamper the poor women who had given birth during all the time that the little girl would still last. M. de Durnowo was in charge of economics of this dream maison.

(ce) I mentioned it above chap. IIL

* (ff) As it could happen that the bastard, who was dropping in town, continued in this maison by the children who were brought there daily, & by the women in childbirth: to prepare for any event, & to flee the orders of the Sovereign, I prefered jointly with M. de Durnovo to the commission de santé the regulation which I had made for this maison of quarantine: it contained in detail the precautions which I have just reported. The commission approved them in a fleeting manner:

33. „Extract from a note remise to the council of guardianships-(î)."

Letter of the maison of the children found, on the part of the W commiflation established for the preservation & the curing 33 of the peste on: (2 $ November 1771).

3 »The arrangement, which was stopped by the suspect co-iv. to wrest from death about a hundred and fifty conveil, concerning the reception of found infants: "re-establishing a hospital for the pestiferous, & 55 the means of generally preserving the whole house of contagion, coming to be preferred to the comrades lion by M. de Durnowo Brigadier of the armies & member of the said conveil, as well as by the doctor Mertens, was found by the commîssion well regulated, & frequently conquered in focus parts."

35 The prelude traducción was made to the chancellery of the Legation of RulTie in Vienna, & faith found in all conforms to the true faith veins of the original. What "which I reach by my figure," Marked In Vienna this: [December 23, 1775-]

33 Grégoire DE Poletïka
33 Conveiller de Légation de Rullie. 33

55. The letter of M. de Betzky [December 13, 1771].

After having spoken to me about the means of making this raison of quarantine less 'dispense dieuse', adds: '3 I believe 33 even, Monsieur, that by fleeing in this respect the pages 33 regulations that you have drafted with regard to health in these new establishments, & 33 that I read with a lot of satisfaction, we could abbreviate the details that I have just spoken of, for 33 the introduction into the maison not only of these 33 children, but also nurses & all...'

{14. ^ We listened to the traffic. children brought since the month of October . In the spring of 1772, everything resumed its old train; perfonnes which could be necessary to themj & c.-}

55 I have the honor to be & C-(i);

Signed:"J, Betzk Y."

* The {egg) in another letter from Go [December 1771].

M. de Betzky expresses himself thus: "I see with tacit facility- the ü-J faction, Monsieur, by your last of the 22 of this 53 months, that the arrangement plans for the reception 35 of the children has already had fon elf-ette, & that you have 33 already already introduced 58 of them in the enclosure of the house. We will save first of all by this operation a lot of hay, details & relaxation; & on the other hand, by always fleeing from this march, we will 33 be able to receive new orphans in all l'estemes & new children in this depot maison, & c."

33 I have the honor to be & c.

Signed:"33 J, Betzky. "3

I brought in little by little at the beginning of the year 1772, in the grand hotel, the rebel of the children I saw in this quarantine maison. Their the number, both of the orphans whose parents died of the child, and of the newborns, amounted to one hundred and fifty.

"That is the way to lay the city flat;
To bring the roof to the foundation,
And bury all, which yet distinctly ranges,
In heaps and piles of ruin."

"You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate,
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize,
As the dead carcasses of unburied men,
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with your uncertainty!
Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!
Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,
Fan you into despair! Have the power still
To banish your defenders; till at length 2500.
Your ignorance, which finds not till it feels,
Making not reservation of yourselves,
Still your own foes, deliver you as most
Abated captives to some nation
That won you without blows! Despising,
For you, the city, thus I turn my back:
There is a world elsewhere."

"Behold our patroness, the life of Rome!
Call all your tribes together, praise the gods,
And make triumphant fires; strew flowers before them:
Unshout the noise that banish'd las Carolinas."

Comments

'To my most beloved and highly honoured friend: although your sweet companionship has always kept me truly happy, and I have always taken singular pleasure, not only from your honest and courteous manners, but also from your pleasant and exceptionally humane reasoning: I am not happy, however, when I am deprived of it for some time, as it often happens that you are absent, or involved in graver activities. I have felt sorrow in part somewhat similar to that which I feel at present, due to the length of time that you remain far away from your city. I attribute this present sadness to two principle causes. The first I believe is, that since you are always increasing your benevolence towards me, with the continual multiplication of your infinite favors, it follows yet again that my affection towards you increases; although having been indebted to you for many years in various ways, I did not think that it was possible that my affection for you might possibly grow even more. The second reason is, that if it is true that the multitude of earthly things, and their diversity distract the human mind, then I will confess that the variety of conversations with my many friends, which at present I miss, was not allowing me to absorb (or immerse) myself as intensely in the recollection and consideration of you, truest friend, and of your most gentlemanly customs, of which, since at present I am deprived, I notice that I lack completely that pleasure, when on other occasions I merely used to listen to you to be satiated somewhat. and I am not only of such a friend, and of all of my other dear companions deprived, but also of the men known to me, so that, corresponding with them, I was able to greet them. Truly if our civic dress, although one seldom sees it, no longer existed, I would sometimes think myself to have wandered into some other city. Wherefore, since heaven does not permit us, my only and beloved friend, by the deadly pestilence, to nourish our ears with more of those sweet discussions, and our eyes with those gracious subjects, which once used to lighten every tedious care, let us not deprive ourselves of visiting one another with letters; no little comfort in all of these human miseries. Therefore I am stirred (knowing how much one who is away from the fatherland is grateful to receive even the smallest piece of news) to write about all that I have seen in our distinguished city, with my wet and unfortunate eyes; and even though the matter will bring you little pleasure, hearing that you are out of so perilous a place should make you grateful. furthermore, while it proves to you that I (of whose death perhaps you have heard) might yet live, it also will oblige you to make less grave every melancholy or other painful nuisance.

I hardly dare to place my timid hand to the page to trace so troublesome a beginning; so that the more I mull over such miseries in the midst of the mind, the more I do recoil from the horrendous description of them: and although I have seen it all, to recount it renews painful tears; nor do I know where I ought to make a start; and if it were permitted me, from this weak undertaking, I would withdraw myself. But, the overwhelming desire that I have, to know if you are still alive, will overcome every fear. one finds that our miserable Florence, at the present, resembles a city that has been sacked by the infidels and afterwards abandoned. Some of the inhabitants, such as yourself, have retired to country villas to escape the deadly plague; some are dead and others are approaching death; so that the while present circumstances offend us, the future threatens us; so as one struggles with death, one fears for one’s life. oh injurious age! oh lamentable season! The neat and beautiful streets, which used to be bursting with rich and noble citizens, are now stinking, ugly and swarming with the poor. one passes by their impudent and fearful shrieks with difficulty and trepidation. The shops are locked, the businesses closed, the courts and the lawyers dragged away, prostrating the laws. now one hears of this theft, now of that murder: the piazzas and markets, where the citizens used to be in the habit of gathering frequently, are now made into communal graves, and vile dens of thieves. Men go about alone, and in exchange for friends, one meets people infected with this deadly plague. even if one parent finds the other, or a brother finds his brother, or a wife her husband, each one keeps a safe distance from their relations: and what is worse? fathers and mothers spurn their own children, abandoning them. one holds blossoms, another odoriferous herbs, a third sponges, a fourth glass vials, and one carries in his hand (or it is far better to say, always held to his nose) small balls composed of diverse aromatic spices; and these are the precautions against the plague. I am certain that few shops, where bread is distributed, are still open; but there, the shopgoers infect each other and take home buboes.

The conversations which used to be honorable in the piazzas and profitable in the markets change to miserable and sorrowful themes: for example, one says: “such a one is dead, that other is sick, another fled, another is confined at home, such a one is in hospital, another is on the lookout, and yet another has disappeared”; and similar recent tidings, which by imagination alone would suffice to make none other than Aesculapius sick. Many go searching for the causes of the disease, and some say: “The astrologers threaten us with it”; others, “The prophets have predicted it.” one recalls some marvel; one blames the quality of the weather, and the heavy air which swarms with plague, saying that it was the same in 1348 and 1478; and still more say similar things. There is such unanimous agreement that everyone concludes, that not only this, but infinite other sicknesses have laid us to ruin. These are the pleasant topics which are heard continually. and though I might be able to place our miserable native city before your mind’s eye with only a single word, by saying that you might imagine it altogether different and completely unlike that which you used to see (as nothing demonstrates for you better than such a comparison) I, nevertheless, want you to be able to understand the matter in greater depth, because the thing imagined compared with the truth of that which one imagines never adds up. nor am I able, it seems to me, to illustrate this with a finer example than my own life: therefore I will describe my life to you, so that by it you might measure all the rest. You know then that on work days, I leave my house before that hour in which all the terrestrial vapors are evaporated by the sun, to go about my usual business; having first taken some antidotes against the venomous infirmity, in which (although the distinguished doctor Mingo said that they are breastplates of paper), I certainly have faith, and not a little; I am not many steps away from home, when every other remaining thought that gathers in my mind, although grave and of things important and necessary, clears from my head, because the first things that present themselves to my eyes, by my good luck, are gravediggers. not those gravediggers of the infected, but the usual type: who, at one time by the few, but now by the many, dead are grieved, because it seems to them that such an abundance begets their future famine. Whoever would have believed that the time would come, in which they might have wished for the good health of all of the ill, as they swear truly to yearn? I think easily, because if those dying of the plague died in another time and of another disease, they would make their usual profit. and so passing by San Miniato between the towers, where I was at one time nearly deafened by the din of the wool beaters, and the whistles and rough conversations of the wool traders, I found an all pervasive and unwanted silence.

Continuing on my journey, in the vicinity of the Mercato nuovo, I encountered the horseman of the pestilence: by whom being deceived for the first time I remained there; because, seeing from afar white horses (although they weren’t of snowwhiteness) bearing a litter, which I thought to myself might contain some noble woman or person of ancient lineage, who rode about for his amusement. But seeing around them then, instead of servants, nurses from Santa Maria nuova, there was no need to inquire further concerning the person’s heritage or occupation. This not being enough for me, and in order to give you all the more extended news of the morning of the joyous beginning of May, I entered the admirable and venerable Church of Santa Reparata; where there were only three priests: the one was singing Mass; the second serves as the choir and organ; the third hears confessions in a chair surrounded by the wall, in the middle of the first nave. nevertheless, he wore irons on his ankles, and handcuffs on his wrists: because he was ordered to be thus by the Vicar, so that he might be able better to escape temptations in canonical solitude. The pious attendants of the Mass included three women in ragged cloaks – old bent and perhaps lame women; each separately in her own pew kneeling; among them only one, my grandfather’s nurse, seemed to recognize me. There were three similarly devoted old men, who, without ever seeing one another, shuffled about the choir on crutches, at times giving the eye to the three lovelies. Truly, one could not believe such things if one had not seen them in person. Therefore I, in the manner of one who witnessed that spectacle (seeing it hardly makes one to believe it) remained stupefied. doubting that the people would not, as they usually did, swarm behind the equestrians into the piazza (as is usual on so celebrated a morning); with such hope I partook there. Where, bustling about I saw, in exchange for men and horses, crosses, coffins, stretchers and tables, on which those diverse dead persons were carried by grave diggers. They (the grave diggers) were summoned by Barlacchi out of necessity, as supporters of the lofty Signori, who made their ceremonial entrance at that moment. and I believe, per adventure, that if the number of the living was not sufficient, he would have read out the names of some of the dead, calling them out according to the custom; even though nothing like the resurrection of Lazarus would happen.

As this spectacle seemed neither worthy nor very safe to me, I did not stay long; and as I was not able to believe that any other part of the city was, with greater frequency, filled with nobles, I directed by steps toward the most famous piazza of Santa Croce. There, I saw a tremendous number gravediggers dancing in a circle and singing loudly, “hearty welcome, plague; hearty welcome, plague.” This was their merry “hearty welcome, May.” Their appearance, together with the thunder of their song, and its words, offered as much displeasure to my eyes and ears, as formerly the happy songs of the honorable young maidens used to bring me pleasure; so that without hesitating, I escaped into the church, where I offered my usual devotions, without a single witness, when I heard from a long way off, a worried and fearful voice. To which drawing myself, I saw laying on the ground, near the fresh graves in the cloister, in black raiment, a pale and afflicted maiden, whose face appeared more that of a corpse than a living woman. (She had) bitter tears streaming down her beautiful cheeks, (and she was) tearing out strands of her beautiful tousled hair, (and) beating her breast and then her face with her own hands. Seeing such a thing would move a block of marble to pity her. Thus, I was stricken with pain, though exceedingly frightened of her. nevertheless, I cautiously approached her and asked: “oh why do you lament so grievously?” She immediately covered her face with the hem of her dress, so I would not be able to recognize her. This act, as is natural, increased my desire to know her. however, the fear, of the other song which those spotted with the plague contagion sang, slowed my steps; but, I told her, that she should not be frightened of me, because I was, finding her oppressed by such severe anxieties, here to give her council and help. Calming her, I added, that I would not leave until I could see her face. She turned, hesitating somewhat, then presently, like a spirited and courageous woman, took to uncovering herself saying: “am I so foolish, that I was not anxious in the presence of the multitude, but will now be terrified of only a single man, who certainly seeks to attend to my needs?” She was so transfigured by her garb and by her immeasurable passion, that I recognized her more by her voice than by her form. When I asked her the cause of such affliction; she exclaimed “Woe unto me! I do not know how to hide it. I grieve and afterwards it grieves me more that I have lost all my contentment, which, even though I might live for 1,000 years, I am not going to recover. and that which pains me even more is that I am still unable to die. I do not complain about this pestilential season, but rather about my unhappy fortune – that the indissoluble lovers’ knot, which so much of my artistry and diligence fabricated, cannot remain tied; from this our common ruin was born and from thence my loving tears are now poured upon the grave of my illfated, faithful lover. oh with whom I had delighted so many times in these once joyful and now miserable arms! With what delight I gazed into his beautiful and shining eyes! oh what pleasure when I pressed my longing lips to his fragrant mouth! oh with such great contentment I united and squeezed my burning breasts to his warm and pure and youthful chest! oh wretched me! So frequently and with such bliss we came to that final amorous joy, simultaneously slaking our desires!” She had no sooner said these words, than she immediately collapsed upon the ground in such a way, that all of my hair stood on end, fearing that she might be dead.

Because, her eyes had closed, her lips had gone pale, and her face even paler than it was before and only semiconscious: only the movement of her griefstricken breast showed a little life left in her. Where I, with that carnal affection that requires it, lightly began to caress her body; unlacing her (dress) in front, although she was not very tightly laced; now laying her on one side, and now turning her (to the other); and so I used on her all those remedies that the lost spirits are made accustomed to resent. finally, as I did so, she opened her troubled eyes again, and she exhaled so warm a sigh, that if I had been made of wax, I would have melted. Then comforting her, I said: “oh simple and unfortunate woman, will you continue to stay here? If your parents, your neighbors, or acquaintances, found you here all alone, what might they have said? Where are your prudence and your respectability?” “oh my misery!” she said, “I never had the former and the latter, I have lost together with that sweet look of his beautiful eyes; a gaze which nourished me as the water which nourishes fishes.” To that I responded: “if my councils, lady, are of some worth to you then you appreciate that I want you, not for love of me, for I am unworthy of it, to come with me; for the sake of your honor, which, will soon be entirely restored; even though it is somewhat obscured at present, more by the malignity of other people’s wicked tongues, than fault of your own. Because, I know many women who fled from their husbands, sheltering with others than their parents. how many have been uncovered in much graver errors by their neighbors and relatives, who today are held to be the beautiful and the good? Sin certainly is a human thing: but enough good sometimes comes of it to amend one’s ways. So that, if you will behave properly, you will see that immediately (immediately I say to you) it will be said that you have been unjustly slandered.” In this manner persuading her, I led her to her own house.

The sun had already climbed to the top of the sky, so that the shadows appeared smaller, when I found myself alone, as I always was. So, I sat a while, desiring to take my food. I rested a little and set out once again to wander the city, directing my steps toward the new temple of the holy Spirit (Santo Spirito); where there was no sign of preparation for the divine service evident, even though it was the proper time. The friars in the church (I stayed there although they were few) were furiously pacing to the high altar and back. They declared to me that a good many of them were dead; and that yet more were sure to die, because they were not allowed to leave, and did not have any provisions to keep them alive. and I need not tell you how they light up the candles of the church with their profanities, I believe perhaps so their dead would not have to find their way out in the dark. Thus, I was driven away, more by the fear of heaven than plague, the friars were repeating the same benedictions so frequently. and turning into the Via Maggio, since it was the Calends of May, however I did not see anything that looked like May to me; in fact, I found a dead man in the middle of the bridge, who no one dared approach: and entering the ancient church of Santa Trinità I found only one seemingly wellborn man there. I asked him for what reason he remained in a city faced with such danger and he answered me: “for love of my native city, which every one of her littleloving citizens has shunned.” To whom I said, “he errs much less who seeks to preserve himself for his native city so that he might be able to serve it at a later time than those who, feigning to serve it, exposed themselves to the danger of leaving it forever.” To which he replied: “if I must tell the truth to one who knows it already, it is not our native city that keeps me here, but it is that disconsolate lady who you saw so devotedly genuflecting for whose love I am prepared to lay down my life.”

It seemed to me that such burning passion was not befitting of one of his mature age so therefore I said to him, “that even in the luckiest of houses that the father abandons his son and the wife her husband.” and he responded: “Such is the degree of my love, that it surpasses every type of blood relation.” he carried on like this: if to avoid the plague to be happy is an excellent remedy, then to be in the presence of her love was tremendous joy, and away from her love such grief that it alone would cause him to depart this life bitterly and alone as he was found here; so unique, he argued, was his love among the various types of love; and he concluded by saying that being in love, and wishing to live, that I should remain close to my lover. not being so yet, but moved by his example, he urged me to fall in love to escape the deadly plague; and told me that I still had time. I was not persuaded by those arguments, judging love a much more dangerous and longer lasting pestilence. Without saying anything else to him I left. and on the nowadays deserted Spini bench I came upon the venerable father alessio, who perhaps to flee the plague remained away from the monastery: perchance he was waiting there to confess one of his penitents outside the church; I learned from him that in the perfectly proportioned and venerable church of Santa Maria novella, from where he, for his good behavior, was excluded, more ladies than one could wish for were assembled there (perhaps owing to the amorous instruction of the festive and charitable brothers) than in any other church. although against his wishes, I took him with me, because the good friar feared what would certainly have happened to him if he had gone there without me. nevertheless, staying only briefly, in fact scarcely having saluted the high altar, because he was never known for his piety, he left; so, I believe, that he could return to work at his bench. I remained to hear the friars’ delightful Compline. There, even though I did not, as usual, see the great number of gentlewomen or noblemen admiring the ladies’ angelic faces and the divine allure of their rich and well designed dresses, which together with the sweet music, invite souls to play love games so much more than to heavenly meditations. I found there less solitude than in any other place; as a result I knew how this church might be able to call itself the most favored and highly blessed than any other. Therefore I decided to stay there until the very last. Where remained, although it was already evening, perhaps, like me, to hear the Compline, only one beautiful young woman in widow’s clothes; whose beauty, and I know that I delude myself, I scarcely have the power to describe to you in words. however, to satisfy you at least in part, I will not proceed in silence; but, by imagining us there, you will supply that which my narration lacks. at first she was (although now sitting on the marble steps near to the cappella maggiore) reposing on her left side in the manner of an anxious person, supporting her somewhat pale face with a snowwhite arm.

She was of an agreeable size and proportionate stature for a finely formed woman. So that even from here one could conclude that all the parts of such a body were so well shaped, that if stripped of her mourning raiment, they would present a wondrous beauty to my eyes. But leaving this part free for you to gaze upon in your imagination, I will describe the part that is made manifest. her smooth and tender skin resembles spotless ivory yet so soft and delicate as to preserve the traces of even the lightest touch, no less than the fine grass of a green and dewy meadow preserves the prints made by dainty little animals. her eyes, concerning which it might be better to say nothing at all than say only a little, seem to be two shining stars which, from time to time, she lifted with such grace, that one saw paradise opened. her delightful brow, the length of which ends in for her splendid and beautiful eyes; about which it appears that love jests and always flits about, shooting his arrows and wounding this, or that loving perfect measure, so bright and shining, that simple narcissus, admiring himself in it, as in the limpid pool might have become infatuated with himself; below which the finely traced arches of her black eyebrows made a covering heart. her ears, from what of them one is able to see, were small, round, and of such shape, that every expert physiognomist would have judged them a sign of acute prudence (or intelligence). But what can I say of the sweet and delicate mouth, situated between two cheeks adorned with delicate roses and lilies or of how, I know not, even in such sadness it seems that a celestial smile shines? But I know enough to believe that nature will use this most beautiful one as a model when it desires to enrich the world once again. The rose colored lips upon the ivory and snow white teeth appear as fiery rubies mixed together with oriental pearls. from Juno, she has a delicately formed nose, as from Venus that of her playful and flowery cheeks. I will not leave out the beauty of her slender, white and graceful neck, which certainly should be ornamented with precious gems. her envious clothes did not give me leave to gaze on the creamy, beautiful and finely sculpted chest, adorned with two little fresh and sweet smelling apples, which I believe were grown in the famous orchard of the Hesperides. But, by the manner in which they refused to yield to her dress, they demonstrated their beauty and firmness; and between them flashes a way, at the end of which, the wanderer might reach the ultimate bliss. her snowwhite and delicate hand, although it might deprive me of part of the beauty of her elegant visage, provided its own refreshment. It was long, slender, capable and outlined with the smallest and shining veins, with the fingers straight and soft and perhaps of such virtue, that by their touches even old Priam might have been aroused by them.

I, not seeing anyone, out of respect for whom I ought to restrain myself, and she inspiring courage in me with her compassionate eyes, approached her and said: “Gracious lady, if a courteous question is not noisome to you, might it please you to tell me for what reason you stay here for so long? and may I offer some aid to you?” To which she responded: “like you perhaps, I have waited for the brothers’ Compline in vain. My needs are such that even a lesser man than you could be useful to me. My clothes display that I am deprived of my beloved husband, and my pain is all the more for he died of the cruel plague, and thus I remain in peril. and, if therefore, you do not want to expose yourself to harm, remain at some distance.” her words, her voice, her manner, and the care that she seemed to have for my safety, pierced my heart so, that I would walk through fire for her. nevertheless, fearing more to displease her, than the danger of the plague, I stopped short of her and asked: “Why do you stay here so alone?” [She replied] “Because I alone am spared [must] I have to have a husband in order to please you? I wish for nothing more than to live married honestly.” [I replied] “and I, who before this moment never wished to marry a woman, now see your beautiful and gracious form, upon whom nature bestowed its bounty, and moved to compassion by your afflictions, am resolved to marry you. even though our age difference is not ideal, my means and other circumstances are such that I will perhaps be able to please you.” She replied “With you men, ever were the promises great and the faith but small, if I have a good memory of things past.” I responded to her: “one who knows how to choose prudently does not have to put his faith in the truthfulness of others and therefore never has to repent of what he has done.” and she rejoined: “as heaven, giver of all that is good, has brought you to me, I cannot doubt that you will show special care for me even though I have never seen you before; and consequently since you are pleased with me, it would be exceedingly wrong if I were not content with you.” It was just after she spoke those words, that a lazy friar, head held high – an act suitable for rowing rather than sacrificing; whose name I will keep to myself so as to be able better to speak of him without any hesitation – as a falcon that sees its prey from the air swoops to earth, pounced on this elegant and delicate lady; and, as if he had spoken with her a thousand times, with great familiarity as is these friars’ custom, he asked if she lacked anything or if she needed his assistance. I told him, that she was never in need of his support, as she would never have a place for his brotherly love.'

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'The scoundrel, acting as one already possessed, perhaps to fashion another relationship more to his taste, would fain have disturbed ours. although he had such sparkling eyes, if he were undressed, he might have wriggled like an enchanted serpent, but when he saw that he was harshly dismissed by her, and not heartily greeted by me, he wrapped himself in his clothes again, jabbering about I know not what, and went off to some other misfortune. You must not believe that I left her there alone straight away, but rather, just behind her, I accompanied her to her house, in which, together with my heart, she locked herself. from whence I departed alone, so happy and intensely delighted by my sweet wife. So as not to deviate from the planned order of things, hastening my steps, I went to the distinguished and cheerful temple of San Lorenzo, where I hoped to see those who delighted with me in the flower of my youthful years. But it was a new emotion that overpowered me, and, as those who taste of the river Lethe, I forgot every other woman, however lovely. all of my thoughts remained wrapped in those black mourning clothes, which I constantly seemed to see about that importune and hypocritical friar; such tremendous jealousy overtook my spirits that I was not able to think on or see anything else. Therefore, to waste time here seemed vain, and as full of desire as I was, to see my longedfor wife again, at once I returned to my house; and putting an ending to this tragic consideration of the horrendous plague, I prepare myself for the pleasure of a future comedy for the following evening. Well, that is what, my dearest friend, the first day of May offered to my eyes. of that which will follow, you will learn about after the wedding; because before that I am not able to think of anything else.'

'Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–1492), called "the Magnificent", was more capable of leading and ruling a city, but he neglected the family banking business, which led to its ultimate ruin. To ensure the continuance of his family's success, Lorenzo planned his children's future careers for them. He groomed the headstrong Piero II to follow as his successor in civil leadership; Giovanni (future Pope Leo X) was placed in the church at an early age; and his daughter Maddalena was provided with a sumptuous dowry to make a politically advantageous marriage to a son of Pope Innocent VIII that cemented the alliance between the Medici and the Roman branches of the Cybo and Altoviti families. The Pazzi conspiracy of 1478 was an attempt to depose the Medici family by killing Lorenzo with his younger brother Giuliano during Easter services; the assassination attempt ended with the death of Giuliano and an injured Lorenzo. The conspiracy involved the Pazzi and Salviati families, both rival banking families seeking to end the influence of the Medici, as well as the priest presiding over the church services, the Archbishop of Pisa, and even Pope Sixtus IV to a degree. The conspirators approached Sixtus IV in the hopes of gaining his approval, as he and the Medici had a long rivalry themselves, but the pope gave no official sanction to the plan. Despite his refusal of official approval, the pope nonetheless allowed the plot to proceed without interfering, and, after the failed assassination of Lorenzo, also gave dispensation for crimes done in the service of the church. After this, Lorenzo adopted his brother's illegitimate son Giulio de' Medici (1478–1535), the future Pope Clement VII. Unfortunately, all of Lorenzo's careful planning fell apart to some degree under his incompetent son Piero II, who took over as the head of Florence after his father's death. Piero was responsible for the expulsion of the Medici from 1494 to 1512.

The Medici additionally benefited from the discovery of vast deposits of alum in Tolfa in 1461. Alum is essential as a mordant in the dyeing of certain cloths and was used extensively in Florence, where the main industry was textile manufacturing. Before the Medicis, the Turks were the only exporters of alum, so Europe was forced to buy from them until the discovery in Tolfa. Pius II granted the Medici family a monopoly on the mining there, making them the primary producers of alum in Europe. The exile of the Medici lasted until 1512, after which the "senior" branch of the family — those descended from Cosimo the Elder — were able to rule until the assassination of Alessandro de' Medici, first Duke of Florence, in 1537. This century-long rule was interrupted only on two occasions (between 1494–1512 and 1527–1530), when anti-Medici factions took control of Florence. Following the assassination of Duke Alessandro, power passed to the "junior" Medici branch — those descended from Lorenzo the Elder, the youngest son of Giovanni di Bicci, starting with his great-great-grandson Cosimo I "the Great." Cosimo (the "Elder" not to be confused with Cosimo I) and his father started the Medici foundations in banking and manufacturing – including a form of franchises. The family's influence grew with its patronage of wealth, art, and culture. Ultimately, it reached its zenith in the papacy and continued to flourish for centuries afterward as Dukes of Florence and Tuscany. At least half, probably more, of Florence's people were employed by the Medici and their foundational branches in business. The Medici became leaders of Christendom through their two famous 16th century popes, Leo X and Clement VII. Both also served as de facto political rulers of Rome, Florence, and large swaths of Italy known as the Papal States. They were generous patrons of the arts who commissioned masterpieces such as Raphael's Transfiguration and Michelangelo's The Last Judgment; however, their reigns coincided with troubles for the Vatican, including Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation and the infamous sack of Rome in 1527. Leo X's fun-loving pontificate bankrupted Vatican coffers and accrued massive debts. From Leo's election as pope in 1513 to his death in 1521, Florence was overseen, in turn, by Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours, Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, and Giulio de' Medici, the latter of whom became Pope Clement VII.

Clement VII's tumultuous pontificate was dominated by a rapid succession of political crises – many long in the making – that resulted in the sack of Rome by the armies of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1527 and rise of the Salviati, Altoviti and Strozzi as the leading bankers of the Roman Curie. From the time of Clement's election as pope in 1523 until the sack of Rome, Florence was governed by the young Ippolito de' Medici (future cardinal and vice-chancellor of the Holy Roman Church), Alessandro de' Medici (future duke of Florence), and their guardians. In 1530, after allying himself with Charles V, Pope Clement VII succeeded in securing the engagement of Charles V's daughter Margeret of Austria to his illegitimate nephew (reputedly his son) Alessandro de' Medici. Clement also convinced Charles V to name Alessandro as Duke of Florence. Thus began the reign of Medici monarchs in Florence, which lasted two centuries. After securing Alessandro de' Medici's dukedom, Pope Clement VII married off his first cousin, twice removed, Catherine de' Medici, to the son of Emperor Charles V's arch-enemy, King Francis I of France – the future King Henry II. This led to the transfer of Medici blood, through Catherine's daughters, to the royal family of Spain through Elisabeth of Valois, and the House of Lorraine through Claude of Valois. In 1534, following a lengthy illness, Pope Clement VII died – and with him the stability of the Medici's "senior" branch. In 1535, Ippolito Cardinal de' Medici died under mysterious circumstances. In 1536, Alessandro de' Medici married Charles V's daughter, Margaret of Austria; however, the following year he was assassinated by a resentful cousin, Lorenzino de' Medici. The deaths of Alessandro and Ippolito enabled the Medici's "junior" branch to lead Florence.'

'In Elizabeth’s reign – before the Irish revolt of the 1590s... there were two serious uprisings in Ireland known as the First and the Second Desmond Rebellions. The first took place in the 1560s, and the second developed in the late 1570s under the brothers James, John, and Gerald Fitzgerald, the leaders of the House of Desmond, an ancient Irish earldom in the southern province of Munster. The Second Desmond Rebellion, also called the Munster Rebellion, was a major conflict that threatened the crown’s authority and possessions in Ireland, and required a substantial mobilization of England’s military apparatus. It attracted foreign intervention in the summer of 1579 and again a year later, when small armies of continental troops, described as primarily “Italian swordsmen,” landed on the southwestern Irish coast, having been dispatched by Pope Gregory XIII in support of the rebellion against Elizabeth (Lennon 222-24). In November 1579, after several years of fighting and unsuccessful attempts at negotiation, the English administrators of colonial Ireland finally lost patience with the leader of the rebellion, the forty-six-year-old Gerald Fitzgerald, fourteenth Earl of Desmond, and declared him a traitor (Bagwell 3:30-1). In her attempts to settle her Irish wars with as little expense as possible, Queen Elizabeth routinely offered pardons to even the most persistent rebels if they would lay down their arms and pledge their loyalty. But the Earl of Desmond had deceived and betrayed her too often. She had pardoned him once before, and had sent him to the Tower and then released him twice. Finally conceding that he was an unreclaimable rebel, she declared him ineligible for a pardon and offered “head money,” £1000 for his head.

Over the next three years, several different English commanders led armies into Munster with varying degrees of success, gradually killing or capturing hundreds of the Desmond rebels. In the summer of 1580, James Fitzgerald was captured, hanged, drawn and quartered (Bagwell 3:55). By May 1581, the English army in Ireland numbered more than 6400 men, and in early January 1582 the youngest brother, Sir John of Desmond, was ambushed and killed. His turquoise and gold ring was sent to Elizabeth, and his head to the Governor of Ireland, Lord Grey of Wilton, as “a New Year’s gift.” Grey displayed it on a pole on a wall of Dublin castle (Bagwell 3:94). Nevertheless, the rebellion dragged on and in December 1582, on the advice of Sir Walter Raleigh, Elizabeth appointed Sir Thomas Butler, tenth Earl of Ormond, her commanding general in Ireland. Known as “Black Tom” because of his dark hair and complexion, Butler was the scion of one of the oldest and most prominent families in Ireland and a major figure in Anglo-Irish relations throughout Elizabeth’s reign. Butler was a distant cousin of Elizabeth Tudor on the Boleyn side – the eighth Earl of Ormond, Thomas Boleyn, was Anne Boleyn’s father. They had been raised in close proximity at the court of Henry VIII; Butler, being born in 1531, was two years older.'

'As a staunch supporter of the English colonial presence in Ireland, Butler carried out a variety of diplomatic and military missions there for Queen Elizabeth during the 1560s and 1570s... When Sir Thomas Butler arrived in Ireland in January 1583 to deal with the Desmond Rebellion, the situation in Munster had deteriorated badly. But a vigorous campaign by Butler during the spring and summer forced most of the individual rebel leaders to surrender and reduced the rebellion to a small band of men loyal to the last of the three rebel Desmond brothers, Gerald Fitzgerald. In November he was cornered, killed, and beheaded in County Kerry by Ormond’s troops, effectively ending the rebellion. Desmond’s head was taken to Thomas Cheston, constable of Castlemaine, “who brought it on his sword point to the Earl of Ormond in Cork” (Sheehan 108). In his letter of November 15th to Lord Burghley recounting the death, Butler wrote “So now is this traytor come to the ende I have longe looked for, appointed by God to dye by the sword to ende his rebellion . . . ” The summary of Ormond’s letter contains the brief sentence: “Sends Desmond’s head by the bearer.”5 According to tradition, Queen Elizabeth “would not believe the news of the earl’s death until she saw his head, and when it was brought to her, she stared at it for hours” (Sheehan 108). In mid-December 1583 she had it mounted on a pole and placed on London Bridge (Holinshed 6:454). As we know, the heads of criminals on London Bridge were nothing unusual, but this rebel’s head was sent from Ireland to London by a general who had been dispatched there to put down a rebellion. Oxford’s striking image, “Rebellion broached on his sword” conveyed perfectly the circumstances of Desmond’s death and the transportation of his head.'

'In the early centuries AD, Munster was the domain of the Iverni peoples and the Clanna Dedad familial line, led by Cú Roí and to whom the king Conaire Mór also belonged. In the 5th century, Saint Patrick spent several years in the area and founded Christian churches and ordained priests. During the Early Middle Ages, most of the area was part of the Kingdom of Munster, ruled by the Eóganachta dynasty. Prior to this, the area was ruled by the Dáirine and Corcu Loígde overlords. Later rulers from the Eóganachta included Cathal mac Finguine and Feidlimid mac Cremthanin. Notable regional kingdoms and lordships of Early Medieval Munster were Iarmuman (West Munster), Osraige (Ossory), Uí Liatháin, Uí Fidgenti, Éile, Múscraige, Ciarraige Luachra, Corcu Duibne, Corcu Baiscinn, and Déisi Muman. By the 9th century, the Gaels had been joined by Norse Vikings who founded towns such as Cork, Waterford and Limerick, for the most part incorporated into a maritime empire by the Dynasty of Ivar, who periodically would threaten Munster with conquest in the next century. Around this period Ossory broke away from Munster. The 10th century saw the rise of the Dalcassian clan, who had earlier annexed Thomond, north of the River Shannon to Munster. Their leaders were the ancestors of the O'Brien dynasty and spawned Brian Boru, perhaps the most noted High King of Ireland, and several of whose descendants were also High Kings. By 1118, Munster had fractured into the Kingdom of Thomond under the O'Briens, the Kingdom of Desmond under the MacCarthy dynasty (Eóganachta), and the short-lived Kingdom of Ormond under the O'Kennedys (another Dalcassian sept). The three crowns of the flag of Munster represent these three late kingdoms. There was Norman influence from the 14th century, including by the FitzGerald, de Clare and Butler houses, two of whom carved out earldoms within the Lordship of Ireland, the Earls of Desmond eventually becoming independent potentates, while the Earls of Ormond remained closer to England. The O'Brien of Thomond and MacCarthy of Desmond surrendered and regranted sovereignty to the Tudors in 1543 and 1565, joining the Kingdom of Ireland. The impactful Desmond Rebellions, led by the FitzGeralds, soon followed. Münster (Low Franconian and Low German: Mönster; Latin: Monasterium, from the Greek μοναστήριον monastērion, "monastery") is an independent city (Kreisfreie Stadt) in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also capital of the local government region Münsterland. Münster was the location of the Anabaptist rebellion during the Protestant Reformation and the site of the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years' War in 1648.

The early Kings of Munster, derived from the Érainn (one of the major sub-branches of Gaels in Ireland), were mentioned in the Red Branch Cycle of Irish traditional history. Prominent figures featuring in this Cycle are Cú Roí mac Dáire, Conaire Mór, Lugaid mac Con Roí and others. These men are all presented as great warriors, in particular Cú Roí features in the Táin bó Cúailnge, where he fights Amergin mac Eccit, until requested to stop by Meadhbh. Eventually Cú Roí is killed by Cú Chulainn after being betrayed by Bláthnat who he had captured. His death was avenged by his son Lugaid mac Con Roí. The Dáirine (named for Dáire mac Dedad), or Clanna Dedad, a major branch of the Érainn, were a significant power in Gaelic Ireland, providing several High Kings of Ireland at the Hill of Tara in addition to ruling Munster. There was also a Temair Luachra ("Tara of the Rushes"), existing as the royal site of Munster, but this is lost to history (it is potentially synonymous with Caherconree). Some of the most prominent High Kings from this time provided by the Érainn of Munster include Eterscél Mór and Conaire Mór who are the subject of the Togail Bruidne Dá Derga. The Laigin in particular were major rivals for Munster at the time. The Chronicle of Ireland places the start of these rulers at roughly the 1st century BCE. Outside of Gaelic sources, the predominant people of Munster, the Érainn, along with other tribes in the area are attested to in Ptolemy's Geographia, where they are known as the Iverni. According to the Book of Glendalough, a member of the Munster royal family, Fíatach Finn, moved north and became King of Ulster, establishing the Érainn kindred known as the Dál Fiatach. This meant competing with the Ulaid rulers of Clanna Rudhraighe. A great revival of power for Munster occurred in the 2nd century AD, as one of their kings, Conaire Cóem, established himself as High King of Ireland. This was a time for pioneering figures, as major High Kings representing other Gaelic groups in Ireland also lived such as Conn Cétchathach founder of the Connachta and Cathair Mór a prominent king of the Laigin. Conaire Cóem holds an important place in Irish genealogies as the forefather of the Síl Conairi. His sons; Cairpre Músc (ancestor of the Múscraige and Corcu Duibne), Cairpre Baschaín (ancestor of the Corcu Baiscind) and Cairpre Riata (ancestor of the Dál Riata) founded kinship groups which would play a major role in Munster, while the latter moved north to Ulster and eventually established Alba (better known as Scotland) in Great Britain.

FitzMaurice first attacked the English colony at Kerrycurihy south of Cork city in June 1569, before attacking Cork itself and those native lords who refused to join the rebellion. FitzMaurice's force of 4,500 men went on to besiege Kilkenny, seat of the Earls of Ormonde, in July. In response, Sidney mobilised 600 English troops, who marched south from Dublin and another 400 landed by sea in Cork. Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormonde, returned from London, where he had been at court, and mobilised the Butlers and some Gaelic Irish clans antagonistic to the Geraldines. After the failed attempt to take Kilkenny, the rebellion quickly descended into an untidy mopping-up operation. Together, Ormonde, Sidney and Humphrey Gilbert, appointed as governor of Munster, devastated the lands of FitzMaurice's allies in a scorched earth policy. FitzMaurice's forces broke up, as individual lords had to retire to defend their own territories. Gilbert, a half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, was the most notorious for terror tactics, killing civilians at random and setting up corridors of severed heads at the entrance to his camps.

Sidney forced FitzMaurice into the mountains of Kerry, from where he launched guerrilla attacks on the English and their allies. By 1570, most of FitzMaurice's allies had submitted to Sidney. The most important, Donal MacCarthy Mór, surrendered in November 1569. Nevertheless, the guerrilla campaign continued for three more years. In February 1571, John Perrot was made Lord President of Munster. He pursued FitzMaurice with 700 troops for over a year without success. FitzMaurice had some victories, capturing an English ship near Kinsale and burning the town of Kilmallock in 1571, but by early 1573 his force was reduced to less than 100 men. FitzMaurice finally submitted on 23 February 1573, having negotiated a pardon for his life. However, in 1574, he became landless, and in 1575 he sailed to France to seek help from the Catholic powers to start another rebellion. Gerald FitzGerald, Earl of Desmond, and his brother, John, were released from prison to reconstruct their shattered territory. Under a settlement imposed after the rebellion, known as "composition", the Desmonds' military forces were limited by law to just 20 horsemen; their tenants were made to pay rent to them rather than supply military service or quarter their soldiers. Perhaps the biggest winner of the first Desmond Rebellion was the Earl of Ormonde, who established himself as the most powerful lord in the south of Ireland due to siding with the English crown. All of the local chiefs had submitted by the end of the rebellion. The methods used to suppress it provoked lingering resentment, especially among the Irish mercenaries; gall óglaigh or gallowglass as the English termed them, who had rallied to FitzMaurice. William Drury, Lord President of Munster from 1576, executed around 700 of these men in the years after the rebellion.

In the aftermath of the uprising, Gaelic customs such as Brehon Laws, Irish dress, bardic poetry and the maintaining of "private armies" were again outlawed and suppressed – things that were deeply valued in traditional Irish society. FitzMaurice had emphasised the Gaelic character of the rebellion, wearing Irish dress, speaking only Irish and referring to himself as the taoiseach of the Geraldines. Irish landowners continued to be threatened by the arrival of English colonists to settle on land confiscated from the Irish. All of these factors meant that, when FitzMaurice returned from Europe to start a new rebellion, plenty of people in Munster were willing to join him. In late 1569 the Catholic Northern Rebellion broke out in England, but was crushed. This and the Desmond Rebellion caused Pope Pius V to issue Regnans in Excelsis, a bull excommunicating Elizabeth and depriving her of the allegiance of her Catholic subjects. Elizabeth had previously accepted Catholic worship in private, but now suppressed militant Catholicism. Luckily for her, most of her Irish subjects did not want to get involved in rebellions, while also mostly remaining Catholic.

The Second Desmond Rebellion (1579–1583) was the more widespread and bloody of the two Desmond Rebellions in Ireland launched by the FitzGerald dynasty of Desmond in Munster against English rule. The second rebellion began in July 1579 when James FitzMaurice FitzGerald landed in Ireland with a force of Papal troops, triggering an insurrection across the south of Ireland on the part of the Desmond dynasty, their allies and others who were dissatisfied for various reasons with English government of the country. The rebellion ended with the 1583 death of Gerald FitzGerald, 15th Earl of Desmond, and the defeat of the rebels. The rebellion was in equal part a protest by feudal lords against the intrusion of central government into their domains; a conservative Irish reaction to English policies that were altering traditional Gaelic society; and a religious conflict, in which the rebels claimed that they were upholding Catholicism against a Protestant queen who had been pronounced a heretic in 1570 by the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis. The result of the rebellions was the destruction of the Desmond dynasty and the subsequent Munster Plantations – the colonisation of Munster with English settlers. In addition, the fighting laid waste to a large part of the south of Ireland. War-related famine and disease are thought to have killed up to a third of Munster's pre-war population. On 10 September 1580, a squadron of Spanish ships under the command of Don Juan Martinez de Recalde landed a Papal force of Spanish and Italians numbering 600 men commanded by Sebastiano di San Giuseppe (aka Sebastiano da Modena; Sebastian de San José), at Smerwick, on the Dingle Peninsula near the same point where Fitzmaurice had landed the previous year. They had arms for several thousand men, sent by Philip II to aid the rebellion, and paid for by Pope Gregory. Desmond, Baltinglass and John of Desmond made an effort to link up with the expeditionary force but English forces under Ormonde and Grey blocked them and prompt naval action by Richard Bingham blockaded the Papal force's ships into the bay at Smerwick. San Giuseppe had no choice but to fortify his men in the fort at Dún an Óir.

In October 1580, Grey de Wilton with up to 4000 troops arrived at Smerwick and laid siege to the garrison. The invasion forces were geographically isolated on the tip of the narrow Dingle Peninsula, cut off by Mount Brandon on one side and the much larger English force on the other. They had no means of escape. In addition, the English had brought up heavy artillery by sea, which rapidly broke down the improvised defences of Dún an Óir. After a three-day siege, Colonel Di san Giuseppe surrendered on 10 October 1580, on agreeing to take a bribe as his reward. Local historian Margaret Anna Cusack (1868) explained that: "In a few days the courage of the Spanish commander failed, and he entered into treaty with the Lord Deputy. A bargain was made that he should receive a large share of the spoils... The English were admitted to the fortress on the following day, and a feast was prepared for them." Grey de Wilton ordered the massacre and the Italian and Spanish mercenaries were beheaded and their bodies thrown into the sea. Among the English soldiers present at the siege and massacre was the writer and explorer Walter Raleigh. This was brought against him as a criminal charge in one of his trials. Raleigh argued that he was "obliged to obey the commands of his superior officer" but he was unable to exonerate himself.'

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'Rathlin Island was used as a sanctuary because of its natural defences and rocky shores; when the wind blew from the west, in earlier times it was almost impossible to land. It was also respected as a hiding place, as it was the one-time abode of St. Columba. Installing themselves in Rathlin Castle, the MacDonnells of Antrim made Rathlin their base for resistance to the Enterprise of Ulster. Their military leader, Sorley Boy MacDonnell (Scottish Gaelic: Somhairle Buidhe Mac Domhnaill) and other Scots had thought it prudent to send their wives, children, elderly, and sick to Rathlin Island for safety. Acting on the instructions of Sir Henry Sidney and the Earl of Essex, Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norreys took the castle by storm. The Rathlin Island massacre took place on Rathlin Island, off the coast of Ireland on 26 July 1575, when more than 600 Scots and Irish were killed. Drake used two cannons to batter the castle and when the walls gave in, Norreys ordered direct attack on 25 July, and the Garrison surrendered. Norreys set the terms of surrender, whereupon the constable, his family, and one of the hostages were given safe passage and all other defending soldiers were killed, and on 26 July 1575, Norreys' forces hunted the old, sick, very young and women who were hiding in the caves. Despite the surrender, they killed all the 200 defenders and more than 400 civilian men, women and children. Drake was also charged with the task of preventing any Scottish reinforcement vessels reaching the Island. The entire family of Sorley Boy MacDonnell perished in the massacre. Essex, who ordered the killings, boasted in a letter to Francis Walsingham, the Queen's secretary and spymaster, that Sorley Boy MacDonnell watched the massacre from the mainland helplessly and was "like to run mad from sorrow".

'With the massacre at Smerwick, the tide had turned decisively against the rebels. However, the war dragged on for two more years of increasingly bitter guerrilla fighting. The civilian population was to suffer tremendously as a result of the war, being targeted by both sides and having their crops, livestock and homes destroyed. Grey, the ruthless English commander, described his own tactics as "burning their corn, spoiling their harvest and driving their cattle". The result was famine and diseases caused by malnutrition. In the summer of 1582, Elizabeth I removed Grey from the office of Lord Deputy for his excessive brutality. By mid 1582, Warham St Leger reported that around 30,000 people had died of famine in Munster alone in the previous six months and hundreds were dying in Cork city of starvation and disease. Meanwhile, the rebellion slowly fell apart. As a result of the defeat at Smerwick, Papal assistance to Nicholas Sanders was cut off. After spending almost two years as a fugitive in the south-west of Ireland, he is believed to have died of cold and starvation in the spring of 1581. In April 1581, a general pardon was offered to all but the rebellion's leaders. Many of the Earl of Desmond's erstwhile supporters surrendered. Baltinglass fled for France in August 1581. Fiach MacHugh O'Byrne made a false surrender in April 1581 but continued his raiding after a short period. However he finally surrendered in September 1582, ending the fighting in Leinster.

For the Earl of Desmond, there would be no pardon, and he was pursued by Crown forces until the end. For the remainder of the war, the Earl and the remaining Geraldines evaded capture on the run in the mountains of Kerry and Tipperary and engaged in guerrilla warfare. In early 1582, John of Desmond was killed in a skirmish north of Cork. The rebellion was finally ended in 1583, when the Earl of Ormonde assumed command of Crown forces. Ormonde took a less ruthless approach to the campaign than previous officers, preferring diplomacy to scorched-earth tactics. He contained the rebels to west Cork and Kerry and persuaded many of Desmond's closest relatives to surrender. On 11 November 1583 the end came when the Earl was killed in Glenaginty in the Slieve Mish Mountains (near Tralee in County Kerry) by the local Moriarty clan of Castledrum on the Dingle peninsula. The Earl and his followers had raided the property of clan Moriarty, stole cattle and mistreated the sister of the clan chief, Owen Moriarty. Men of clan Moriarty, with 25 soldiers, pursued the Earl's followers until they captured and killed the Earl at Glenaginty. Owen Moriarty received 1000 pounds of silver from the English government for Desmond's head, which was sent to Queen Elizabeth in London, while his body was triumphantly displayed on the walls of Cork city.

The Munster Plantation of the 1580s was the first mass plantation in Ireland. It was instituted as punishment for the Desmond Rebellions, when the Geraldine Earl of Desmond had rebelled against English interference in Munster. The Desmond dynasty was annihilated in the aftermath of the Second Desmond Rebellion (1579–83) and their estates were confiscated by the Crown. The English authorities took the opportunity to settle the province with colonists from England and Wales, who, it was hoped, would be a bulwark against further rebellions. In 1584, the Surveyor General of Ireland, Sir Valentine Browne and a commission surveyed Munster, to allocate confiscated lands to English Undertakers (wealthy colonists who "undertook" to import tenants from England to work their new lands). The English Undertakers were obligated to develop new towns and provide for the defence of planted districts from attack. As well as the former Geraldine estates (spread through the modern counties of Limerick, Cork, Kerry and Tipperary), the survey took in the lands belonging to other families and clans that had supported the rebellions in Kerry and southwest Cork. However, the settlement here was rather piecemeal because the ruling clan – the MacCarthy Mór line – argued that the rebel landowners were their subordinates and that the lords actually owned the land. In this area, lands once granted to some English Undertakers was taken away again when native lords, such as the MacCarthys, appealed the dispossession of their dependants. Other sectors of the plantation were equally chaotic. John Popham imported 70 tenants from Somerset, only to find that the land had already been settled by another undertaker, and he was obliged to send them home. Nevertheless, 500,000 acres (202,343 ha) were planted with English colonists. The Crown hoped that the settlement would attract in the region of 15,000 colonists, but a report from 1589 showed that the English Undertakers had imported only about 700 English tenants between them. Historians have noted that each tenant was the head of a household, and that he therefore likely represented at least 4–5 other people. This would put the English population in Munster at nearer to three or four thousand persons, but it was still substantially below the projected figure. The Munster Plantation was supposed to develop compact defensible settlements, but the English settlers were spread in pockets across the province, wherever land had been confiscated. Initially the English Undertakers were given detachments of English soldiers to protect them, but these were abolished in the 1590s. As a result, when the Nine Years War — an Irish rebellion against English rule – reached Munster in 1598, most of the settlers were chased off their lands without a fight. They took refuge in the province's walled towns or fled back to England. However, when the rebellion was put down in 1601–03, the Plantation was re-constituted by the Governor of Munster, George Carew.'

"Munster continued to suffer from bubonic plague and famine in the years following the rebellion, and was described as having vast empty areas and a substantially reduced population. Perhaps as much as one third of the province's population perished in the war."

'James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald landed a small Papal invasion force in July 1579, initiating the Second Desmond rebellion. This continued for three years, though Fitzmaurice was killed within weeks of the landing, and the following year, on 10 September 1580, a squadron of Spanish ships under the command of Don Juan Martinez de Recalde landed a Papal force of Spanish and Italians at Smerwick, on the Dingle Peninsula, near Fitzmaurice's landing-point. The force numbered 600 men, and brought with it arms for several thousand. It was commanded by Sebastiano di San Giuseppe (aka Sebastiano da Modena), paid for and sent by Pope Gregory XIII, and was a clandestine initiative by Philip II to aid the rebellion. (It was found later that none of the Spanish officers had a commission from King Philip, nor the Italians from Pope Gregory, though the latter had been granted indulgences for taking part.) At the time neither Spain nor the Papacy was formally at war with the Kingdom of Ireland, but the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis of 1570 had released observant Catholics from their allegiance to Queen Elizabeth I. On 5 November, a naval force led by Admiral Sir William Winter arrived at Smerwick Harbour, replenishing the supplies of Lord Grey de Wilton, who was camped at Dingle, and landing eight artillery pieces.[3] On 7 November, Lord Grey de Wilton laid siege to the Smerwick garrison. The invading forces were geographically isolated on the tip of the narrow Corca Dhuibhne (Dingle Peninsula), cut off by Cnoc Bréanainn (Mount Brandon), one of the highest mountains in Ireland, on one side, and the much larger English force on the other. The English forces began the artillery barrage on Dún an Óir on the morning of the 8 November, which rapidly broke down the improvised defences of the fort.

According to Grey de Wilton's account, contained in a despatch to Queen Elizabeth I of England dated 11 November 1580, he rejected an approach made by the besieged Spanish and Italian forces to agree terms of a conditional surrender in which they would cede the fort and leave. Lord Grey de Wilton claimed that he insisted that they surrender without preconditions and put themselves at his mercy, and that he subsequently rejected a request for a ceasefire. An agreement was finally made for an unconditional surrender the next morning, with hostages being taken by English forces to ensure compliance. The following morning, an English force entered the fort to secure and guard armaments and supplies. Grey de Wilton's account in his despatch says "Then put I in certain bands, who straight fell to execution. There were six hundred slain." Grey de Wilton's forces spared those of higher rank: "Those that I gave life unto, I have bestowed upon the captains and gentlemen that hath well deserved..." Sir Geoffrey Fenton wrote to London on 14 November about the prisoners that a further "....20 or 30 Captains and Alphiaries [were] spared to report in Spain and Italy the poverty and infidelity of their Irish consociates [sic]."'

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'According to Cusack (1871), the few that were spared suffered a worse fate. They were offered life if they would renounce their Catholic faith; on refusal, their arms and legs were broken in three places by an ironsmith. They were left in agony for a day and night and then hanged. In contrast, Grey's report mentioned: "Execution of the Englishman who served Dr Sanders, and two others, whose arms and legs were broken for torture." He did not specify why they were tortured, nor refer to their religion. According to the English writer John Hooker in his Supply to the Irish Chronicle (an addition to Holinshed's Chronicles) written in 1587, the bands ordered to carry out the executions were led by Captain Raleigh (later Sir Walter Raleigh) and Captain Mackworth. Richard Bingham, future commander of Connacht, was present and described events in a letter to The 1st Earl of Leicester, although he claimed the massacre was perpetrated by sailors. The poet Edmund Spenser, then secretary to the Lord Deputy, is also thought to have been present. According to the folklore of the area, the execution of the captives took two days, with many of the captives being beheaded in a field known locally in Irish as Gort a Ghearradh (the Field of the Cutting); their bodies later being thrown into the sea. Archaeologists have not yet discovered human remains at the site, although a nearby field is known as Gort na gCeann (the Field of the Heads) and local folklore recalls the massacre. Three decades later, when Raleigh had fallen from favour, his involvement with this massacre was brought against him as a criminal charge in one of his trials. Raleigh argued that he was "obliged to obey the commands of his superior officer" but he was unable to exonerate himself. He was executed on 29 October 1618, chiefly for his involvement in the Main Plot.'

'The Battle of Aljubarrota was a battle fought between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Crown of Castile on 14 August 1385. Forces commanded by King John I of Portugal and his general Nuno Álvares Pereira, with the support of English allies, opposed the army of King John I of Castile with its Aragonese, Italian and French allies at São Jorge, between the towns of Leiria and Alcobaça, in central Portugal. The result was a decisive victory for the Portuguese, ruling out Castilian ambitions to the Portuguese throne, ending the 1383–85 Crisis and assuring John as King of Portugal. Portuguese independence was confirmed and a new dynasty, the House of Aviz, was established. Scattered border confrontations with Castilian troops would persist until the death of John I of Castile in 1390, but these posed no real threat to the new dynasty. To celebrate his victory and acknowledge divine help, John I of Portugal ordered the construction of the monastery of Santa Maria da Vitória na Batman Valahala and the founding of the town of Batalha; Portuguese for '"battle"'), close to the site where the battle was fought. The king, his wife Philippa of Lancaster, and several of his sons are buried in this monastery.'

'The earliest references to black powder weapons in medieval chronicles are unfortunately sparse. In 1326 the Council of Florence is said to have ordered the manufacture of metal cannon and iron balls, but the document on which this is based may be a forgery since the person who claimed to discover it was sent to prison for stealing old documents and altering them to raise their black market value. The first passing reference to cannon being used in a siege dates back to the siege of Friuli (in Italy) in 1331. Thereafter, the English monarch Edward III brought along cannon on the Crécy campaign of 1346, as did the French who opposed him. However, the chronicles give little detail as to their construction, and contradict each other on whether cannon were actually used at the battle of Crécy on 26 August 1346. Two eyewitness accounts of the battle fail to mention them, but the chronicler Giovanni Villani, who is likely to have interviewed Genoese mercenaries who fought on the French side, relates that as the Genoese crossbowmen advanced on the English longbowmen, they were broken by repeated volleys of arrows and retreated. At this point the English set off three cannon, which so frightened the Genoese that their retreat turned into a rout. The use of black powder weapons was more clearly recorded during the rebellion of some Flemish industrial cities, led by Philip van Artevelde of Ghent against Louis II of Flanders. At the battle of Beverhoutsveld on 3 May 1382, Louis II’s force outnumbered the rebels by at least five to one, so the army from Ghent took up a defensive position with a pond on one flank and artillery on the other. Their artillery consisted of ribaudiaux – wheelbarrows mounted with three or more small cannons, protected from attack by long iron spikes on the front. Ribaudiaux provided both mobility and concentration of fire. Seeing the Ghentenaars’ strong position, Louis II wanted to wait them out, but his allies (militiamen from Bruges) got drunk and charged the rebels in contradiction to orders. The militia had several handgonnes of an indeterminate type, but in their intoxicated state they failed to use them or any other weapon effectively. As they stumbled forward, they were met with a volley of 300 barrels from the ribaudiaux, followed by a flanking manoeuvre by the Ghentenaars around the pond. A second volley from the ribaudiaux sent the Bruges militia fleeing in panic and their fear spread to the rest of Louis II’s army. The Ghentenaars moved in and slaughtered their foes, winning what might have been the first battle in which a concentration of fire from black powder weapons played a significant part.

In response to this defeat, King Charles VI of France led 10,000 men against the rebels in support of Louis II. At Comines on the river Lys, the rebels stopped them by destroying the bridge into town. The French sent knights around a bend in the river, where they could be ferried across unobserved, while the main force distracted the rebels by engaging them in an artillery duel across the water. About 400 French knights made it to the opposite bank and had to spend an uncomfortable evening in a marsh. The next day the Flemish discovered them and attacked. With both sides hampered by the mire, the fight descended into individual combat where the French knights’ superior armour and training won the day. The French forced the Flemish back into Comines, at which point the main French 14 force fixed the bridge, crossed over, and took the town. The final round occurred at Roosebeke on 27 November 1382, when the rebels attacked the French with a closely ranked mass of pikemen supported by artillery and crossbowmen. The initial artillery barrage caused the French centre to waver and withdraw slightly, but as the pikes advanced the Flemish artillerists could not fire without endangering their own men. Once the pike men pushed into the indented French centre, the French flanks hit them. Pressed on three sides, the Flemish were slaughtered and their leader Philip van Artevelde died in the fray. The artillery had insufficient mobility to support the infantry effectively. The next major battle involving the use of black powder weapons was at Aljubarrota on 14 August 1385, fought between the Portuguese and the army of the Spanish kingdom of Castile. The Portuguese had inferior numbers and took defensive positions behind a trench and brushwork palisades in order to keep the Castilian cavalry from making a charge. As an added measure they dug a chequered pattern of holes in the field in front in order to trip up their opponents’ horses. Creeks and steep terrain protected their flanks. The Castilians, seeing a direct assault would be risky, deployed 16 cannon and opened up on the Portuguese position. The defenders wavered, frightened by the sight and sound of the artillery more than the effect it had on their ranks, but they did not retreat because the Castilians had already sent some light cavalry around to their rear. Having nowhere to run, the Portuguese held their ground. The Castilians finally lost patience and charged, but a determined Portuguese defence won the day. Once again black powder had struck fear in the hearts of the enemy, but failed to be the deciding factor in battle. A fixed position of relatively exposed, massed men had been able to withstand an artillery barrage.

Artillery was beginning to lose its novelty. In his "De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae" (Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul, commonly known in English as ‘Phisicke Against Fortune’), Petrach (1304–74) observed:

‘This plague was only lately so rare as to be looked on as a great miracle; now, so easily taught the very worst matters are to human minds, it has become as common as any other kind of weapon.’

Setting aside any medieval exaggeration (for cannon were certainly not as common as swords), the passage does suggest black powder weapons had lost their fearsomeness and now had to rely on actual deadliness. One reason for the Castilian failure at Aljubarrota may have been insufficient firepower. If considerable numbers of Portuguese had been hit by cannon fire, they would in all probability have tried to cut their way through the Castilian cavalry as a means of escape. In Italy, the Veronese found one solution to the firepower problem during their campaign against the Paduans in 1387. They constructed a huge cart containing 144 bombardelle (small, portable bombards), organized into three banks of 48 guns, each bank subdivided into sets of 12 guns, all of which could be fired simultaneously or in succession, shooting stones ‘the size of a hen’s egg’. This contraption had a crew of three men, presumably one for each bank of guns. Like the ribaudiaux, it was an attempt to combine mobility and concentration of fire, but the cart proved too heavy to keep up with the army and failed to make it to the crucial battle of Castagnaro on 11 March 1387. The reference to stones being fired is significant. Shooting giant arrows became less popular with time as soldiers discovered a smooth ball provided better accuracy. Stone was cheap and easy to shape. Lead was also favoured because it was easy to cast, but iron was less popular on account of the poor quality of cast iron at that time. In general, gonners favoured lead for smaller black powder weapons and stone for larger ones. It would have been a difficult and expensive task to cast a lead ball for the largest siege bombards.

The strengths and weaknesses of this new artillery were revealed within the first half-century of its use. It had been employed to some effect, but its major impact on the enemy, that of fear, had begun to wear off due to increased familiarity (one can imagine noblemen ordering their armies to attend artillery practice so that the loud booms and clouds of sulphurous smoke would no longer startle them). With this advantage gone, armies needed to develop new weapons that would actually be dangerous to the enemy. Large bombards, while effective in sieges, proved too slow and cumbersome for field use. Smaller cannon could be carried on wagons, but they too tended to lag behind the common soldier and could not go everywhere that he could. The solution was to dismount the guns from the ribaudiaux and put them into the hands of individual soldiers. This offered a concentration of fire that could keep up with the marches and battlefield manoeuvres of the infantry. There had already been experiments with hand-held black powder weapons, and an inauspicious early practice session at Beverhoutsveld in 1382. The next 50 years would see this innovation put to better use. At this point it might be interesting to consider why handgonnes were needed at all. Artillery had an obvious use in sieges, with bombards firing hundredweight balls that knocked down their first walls as early as 1375, at the siege of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte. Crossbows and longbows, used for anti-personnel purposes, seemed to provide sufficient rate of fire and penetrative power compared to the slow and inaccurate early handgonnes. Nevertheless, handgonnes must have had some advantage on the medieval battlefield, as eventually they did supplant the bow. It was a slow transition, with some armies taking a good two centuries to relinquish the longbow, preferring it even after the development of the matchlock. Yet throughout this period handgonnes were used alongside bows and crossbows, and gradually became more common than the earlier forms of missile weapons.

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As the limitation of artillery in the field became obvious, it became a weapon used more exclusively for sieges. Cannon grew in size, their builders gaining confidence, and soon they were regularly engaged in battering down city and castle walls. Smaller cannon were still being used for the defence of fortified positions and in the field of battle, but now the smallest black powder weapons, handgonnes, came to the fore. They used little powder, cost less, and proved more useful in the field. Just as this transition was occurring in the late 14th century, 18 gunpowder began to get cheaper as Europeans learned to manufacture their own saltpetre. The first recorded saltpetre plantation opened in Frankfurt in 1388 and others soon appeared elsewhere in Europe. These plantations usually comprised cellars or pits filled with straw, leaves, and slaked lime, which were kept at a constant temperature for about a year in order to promote the natural formation of calcium nitrate. The plantations were watered regularly with urine from animals or a ‘wine-drinking man’. This curious last element relates to the increased level of ammonia in the urine of a person who has been drinking heavily. It is significant because in the final stage of decomposition, bacteria metabolizes ammonia into nitrites and nitrates. While bacteria can get ammonia from the waste products of other micro-organisms, adding an extra supply speeds up the process, something gunpowder researcher Bert Hall referred to as ‘fertilizing the fertilizer pile’.

Recipes for gunpowder dating to the 14th and 15th centuries give varying proportions of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal – allowing for the differences in the purity of saltpetre and the type of black powder weapon for which the gunpowder was intended. Even with the new saltpetre plantations purity could not be assured, for techniques were relatively primitive and producers had only a vague notion of the chemical processes involved. Gonners generally mixed powder themselves as poorly prepared powder could be understrength or, more seriously, overstrength. While the danger of using early black powder weapons has been overstated in much of the literature, the number of references to, and examples of, split barrels suggests that being a gonner was not a job for the faint-hearted. Domestic saltpetre manufacture led to cheaper gunpowder and allowed for larger cannon and more numerous handgonnes. Contemporary records show a huge increase in gunpowder stores through the 15th century. Whereas 14th-century records describe small quantities, usually in the dozens of pounds, and contain numerous urgent requests for more, in the 15th century the amounts steadily rise. In France, the castle of Melun needed only 10.5kg (23lb) of gunpowder in 1359, but by 1371 the castle of Breteuil needed 45kg (100lb). A major siege like that of Saint-Sauveurle- Vicomte in 1375 required 90kg (200lb). At that time there were few handgonnes, and only a small number of cannon that were slow-firing and generally small. But in 1448, less than a century later, the Duke of Burgundy sent the Knights Hospitaller 1,633kg (3,600lb) of powder to defend Rhodes against the Sultan of Egypt. In 1430 the Burgundians needed 7,711kg (17,000lb) to fight Joan of Arc’s army.'

'Men attacking the Citadel of Women. This Flemish manuscript illustration dates from 1442 or 1443 but shows simple socketed handgonnes still in use. (Champion des Dames by Martin le Franc, Bib. Royale, Ms. 9466, f.4r, Brussels) Martin le Franc's Le Champion des Dames, presented to Duke Philippe of Burgundy in 1442, was the apotheosis of a vast debate in the late middle ages over the role and nature of women. Marcelo Ohara, director of the ensemble Continens Paradisi writes: "(Le Franc) organized his work as a great contradictory trial with prosecution and defence, and, of course, a final verdict in favour of the female sex; it is an enthusiastic rhetorical tour de force in which all his knowledge of the bar is deployed in the service of poetry." Le Franc himself cites both Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474) and Gilles Binchois (c. 1400-1460) in the poem, who returned the favor by setting parts of the poem itself.'

'Alexandre de Rhodes was born in Avignon, Papal States (now in France). According to some sources, he was a descendant of Jewish origin. He entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Rome on 24 April 1612 to dedicate his life to missionary work. In 1624, he was sent to the East Indies, arriving in Cochin-China on a boat with fellow Jesuit Girolamo Maiorica, and studied Vietnamese under Francisco de Pina. Three years later, he started a mission in Tonkin at the request of the Jesuit superior in Macau. In 1627, he travelled to Tonkin, Vietnam where he worked until 1630, when he was forced to leave. During these three years he was in and around the Court at Hanoi during the rule of Trịnh Tùng and Trịnh Tráng. It was during that time that he composed the Ngắm Mùa Chay, a popular catholic devotion to this day, meditating upon the Passion of Christ in the Vietnamese language. He was expelled from Vietnam in 1630 as Trịnh Tráng became concerned about him being a spy for the Nguyen. Rhodes in his reports said he converted more than 6,000 Vietnamese. Daily conversation in Vietnam "resembles the singing of birds", wrote Alexandre de Rhodes. From Vietnam Rhodes went to Portuguese Macau, where he spent ten years. He then returned to Vietnam, this time to the lands of the Nguyễn Lords, mainly around Huế. He spent six years in this part until he aroused the displeasure of lord Nguyễn Phúc Lan and was condemned to death. As his sentence was reduced to exile, Rhodes returned to Rome by 1649 and pleaded for increased funding for Catholic missions to Vietnam, telling somewhat exaggerated stories about the natural riches to be found in Vietnam. This plea by Alexandre de Rhodes is at the origin of the creation of the Paris Foreign Missions Society in 1659. As neither the Portuguese nor the Pope showed interest in the project, Alexandre de Rhodes, with Pope Alexander VII's agreement, found secular volunteers in Paris in the persons of François Pallu and Pierre Lambert de la Motte, the first members of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, who were sent to the Far-East as Apostolic vicars. Alexandre de Rhodes himself was sent to Persia instead of back to Vietnam. Rhodes died in Isfahan, Persia in 1660 and was buried in the New Julfa Armenian Cemetery.'